A few things

[Ben Edwards]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:51:44 +0200, Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org> wrote:
> I suggest we forgive this time and try to get things working (it makes
> no sense going back anyway, I guess), but then make it clear that next
> time changes like this need to be planned, or we will be really really
> upset and take a very aggressive revenge like, yes, like something
> really powerful and bad, like even tell people they've been bad, bad,
> bad!

Agree

> I feel like I agree, but I don't know: what is a 'grafter'? :)

c my other email

> 
> I put Setup and Customize to mean Install and Customize, which are
> farily different.  But Install is probably better than setup.  How about
> then:
>  Topic:
>     Application
>     Networking
>     Security
>     Installation
>     Customization
> and
>  Goal:
>     Writing
>     Computing
>     Drawing
>     Photo editing
>     ...   (may be the same ontology used in the use:: facet of debtags,
>     and may also be an opportunity to put some grain of salt in the
>     debtags one as well)
> 
> > I do not think it should be a drop down list.  What Happens if I Want
> > to select two topics - I also don't really like the term topic - I
> > would like something very generic like tag or Category.
> 
> "Topic" was intended to be the name of a specific facet.
> 
> I think that needing to select more than one tag per facet is quite a
> rare use case, so I don't think that the interface should be optimized
> for that.

If this is true I feel it is previously because people have previously
been almost always constrained in this way.  I have a general problem
with trying to put this type of thing into a hierarchy - even one that
is one deep.  My original idea was to have tags - the idea that
documents could be tagged with certain things - such as Networking
or/and Newbie or/and Application or/and Howto.. .  The idea being that
the search could include as many or few of these tage as possible. 
This gives a great flexibility and I think reflects the real world.  I
also don't really understand why they are called debtags when there
seem more like categories to me.  I agree if we were trying to have a
few drop downs in the search categories may be useful but I want to
break free of this constraint and come up with something more
flexible.  I still think the stuff at
http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/CategoryDefined is worth persuing.  The
reason they are called Categories here is because this is the langage
that was previously used (on wiki).  I am seriously considering
putting in the work to rename them to tags.

> As a result, such a functionality should be put in a way that advanced
> people can use it, but won't bother newbies.  One possibility would be
> like the gq LDAP editor does: putting a small down-arrow to the right of
> every facet pop-up, and clicking on it would add another drop-down list.

I don't think newbies will have a problem with the idea of check boxes
next to words - in fact newbies may prefer seeing all the terms in
front of them - drop downs with there scroll bars can be a bit fiddly
to the Internet novice - remember my original idea was having under 15
tags.

I do think the idea of audience and platform are good - although I am
not sure if the total novice will know what platform means.

Desktop (if you are a new user use this) and Server (for more advanced
users) and kiosk (ignore if you don't know what this is) is one way to
go.

Ben

> Ciao,
> 
> Enrico
> 
> --
> GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org>
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Ben Edwards - Poole, UK, England
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