[ge-talk] Installer - App Categories

[Nathan Whitehorn]

Waldemar Kornewald wrote:
> Mikael Jansson wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> ---Codecs
>>> ---Device Drivers
>>> ---Maintenance, Tuneup, Cleanup
>>> Utilities
>>>
>> I personally think this is way too much. What's the difference 
>> between "Antispyware"/"Antivirus" and "Maintenance, Tuneup, Cleanup"? 
>> And how come "Codec" has its own folder? Shouldn't that be in the 
>> system preferences, if need to be exposed at all? Also, why two 
>> Development categories?
>>
>> I opt for /not/ doing fine-grained categories.
>
> Agreed. I will repeat my last suggestion:
>
> Every app may be in one the following three categories:
> * Applications
> * Games
> * Preferences
Sounds good.

> Apps that don't specify a category are not shown in the Deskbar.
Reasonable, I guess. Half the point of bundles, though, is to avoid 
cluttering /boot/apps. I would much prefer having the Deskbar simply 
show the contents of that directory. The file system is a good thing. 
It's obvious how to change the contents. What I would suggest, in fact, 
is to have ~/config/be simply contain symlinks to /boot/apps, 
/boot/preferences, and /boot/games. Then if people want to categorize 
their deskbar, or modify it in any way they can. We could also put saved 
queries in there. The Deskbar itself *should not know anything* about 
packages, or software placement, nor should apps try or need explicitly 
to put themselves there -- an overreliance on people opening apps with 
the start menu created the C:\Program Files mess on Windows.
>
> To make all installed software still accessible from an intuitive 
> place (for uninstall and inspection of installed software) the 
> "Applications" menu in Deskbar gets an entry "Show All Applications" 
> (placed at the top and separated from the other entries). This entry 
> opens the "Software Manager" which should look like an application 
> launcher, but also allow for inspecting all installed bundles and 
> packages.
Why not just open a query that lists all your applications, as opposed 
to faking it with some app? A Software Manager like thing should be used 
only for removing installed packages, and should be a preference. With 
bundles, we already can uninstall them by dragging them from the query 
to the trash. The only other thing a fake launcher could do would be to 
get in the way.
> If you want categories then create a folder on the desktop containing 
> subfolders with bundles or links to your applications. Right-click the 
> desktop and browse that folder to get a categorized view of your 
> applications. I'm not so sure about allowing categories within Deskbar 
> because on multi-user systems you cannot suit everyone and for 
> administrators it's easier to live with a uniform scheme on all 
> computers.
Or do that in ~/config/be? There's no reason everyone's deskbar should 
be the same. On Windows, you can have user-configured start menus, and 
on macs, people like being able to set the things in the Dock. I would 
worry more about users than admins.
-Nathan