Request for comments: port-tags

[Anton Berezin]

On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 09:36:20AM -0800, Michael C. Shultz wrote:
> On Monday 07 November 2005 09:23, Anton Berezin wrote:

> > So even for two levels, what you ask pretty much does not make a lot of
> > sense, provided I understood your idea (and please explain in to me one
> > more time if I did not)!

> One common gripe about the ports system is the two level directory
> structure is too flat, and certain folk resist rather vigorously
> adding sub categories.  The sugestion put forth was to use tags as a
> multilevel directory structure and using the actual structure only as
> place holders

> The idea is to decouple the actual ports directory structure, and come
> up with something more useful without having to change the actual
> ports structure.  If your tags are only one level deep, we aren't much
> better off than before.  

No argument here, more or less.  We, however, seem to disagree about the
actual implementation.

Maybe we should not think about tags as categories and dispense with the
idea of a `level' altogether.

Tags, as opposed to multi-leveled categories, are equal to each other.
One needs to be very careful imposing a structure where there is not
one.

So instead of thinking in terms of tags as multi-level categories on
steroids, the idea is to be more operational:

"I want a _mail_ _client_ that supports _maildir_ and _imap_".  No
levels.

The actual technical implementation becomes much more sane, too. Think
"joins", as opposed to pre-populating huge text file with all [alright;
not all;  some;  who gets to define which ones?] possible combinations
of tags.

So, to re-iterate, the right operational mode for this is not "go there,
see what's in it", but "impose a restriction, see what's left".

Are we on the same wave?  :-)

\Anton.
-- 
An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
-- Robert A. Humphrey