Ubuntu applications database

[Dougie Richardson]

Hi Allan,

[snip]

> On the issue of subjectivity, I had intended RecommendedApplications as
> somewhere very much to collect the subjective opinions of Ubuntu users;
> hence, the first line reads: '/This page is a list of software
> recommendations made other Ubuntu users.' /I'm sure I could do more to
> emphasise the subjective nature of the entries on that page. That
> aside,
> is it wrong to have subjective opinions on the wiki? I thought that it
> was quite a nice idea to give people the chance to express themselves.

Probably not a bad thing as such but on the help wiki we need to be
objective, otherwise there is the potential for arguments to start which
helps no one - people have all the chance in the world to express their
opinions on software on the forums (and frequently do). I like the idea of
what you're promoting but think it is better laid out to suggest what a user
might be looking for rather than saying "this is the best". In some cases,
such as Firefox, it is probably true that it is the best browser but when it
comes to more specialist applications, say mathematics for example, it may
be the greatest on earth at transposing formula but if it doesn't support
RPN its no use to me.

[snip]

> Function 1: An indication of the applications which are available for
> Ubuntu.
> Function 2: An index to pages on the wiki which concern specific
> applications.
> 
> I think we are probably in agreement in saying that the page probably
> isn't well suited to function 1. What I was saying in my last email,
> however, was that I think the page is useful in terms of function 2,
> but
> that (in supporting that function) it would be nice if it could be
> automated in some way.

Oh OK, I'd agree with that. Is there some commonality between software pages
that could be used to automate their addition? If a standard template (I see
there is one) was used then you'd have less problems, i.e. say fields for
PackageName, PackageDescription, PackageDesktopType and PackageURL then they
could be scraped by a cron job into a page (off the top of my head, I don't
use moin moin outside of this project and am not wholly familiar with it).

If Phil is reading this he might have a better idea, his macros are more
elegant than mine.

Cheers,

Dougie