iafa draft proposal

[Robert Gerin-Lajoie <[e-mail]>]

Hi Peter,

Here some comments on the iafa DOC II proposal, draft 92.06.10, 
specially the paragraph IAFA-PACKAGES

May be i am a little bit late, making some comments on a text that is
already obsolete, but may be it can help, so i speak. By the way, excuse 
my english...

We are standardizing our softwares installations with lude here and 
we ave too installed a log for each software package we install like the one
iafa suggest.
So i try to summerize our experience.



>Software Packages Information
>-----------------------------
>
>Filename: IAFA-PACKAGES
>
>This file contains records with the following fields. The record is
>started and delimited from other records by the "Package-Name" field.
>
>Any number of these files may exist in the archive.
>
>
>Package-Name:	Name of the file or directory containing the package

The name of the file should include is version. That way more than 1 version of
the same package can stay under the same directory.
a dash should separe the name and the version, something like
ghostscript-2.4.1

>
>Title:		Title of the package
>

Name, version, Title and description are frequently associated.

We have discuss it with the lude project and came at thoses conclusions:
The users need _absolutely_  a way to make easily a condensed index, something
like the first line of man (NAME line) that is used with man -k.

Where should we put that first line?
On the title line? 
We have put on our project: first line of description, stating that
the first line should be autonomous.

And we don't put title as it is redondant with name. 

What do you think? If title is the be the "condensed description", it should
be more explicit; but that's not the case with your exemple.

>Version:	This field can be used if a version number or string is
>		associated with the package
>
>Description:	Description of the function of the programs in the package
>
>Author:		Name and Email address of authors if available
>
>Maintained-by:	This field should be included when the current maintainer
>		of the package is known. Contact information should be
>		included
>

Why not put usenet groups and e-mail open discussion list that frequently
discuss use of software and help installations and/or users?
So this will add a new field: Discussions-about, or Related-Newsgroup
Maintained-by should be replace by Bugs-reports

>Maintained-at:	Host name of the "home" of the package if known. This is
>		the site at which the most uptodate version of the package
>		would be expected to be found
>
>Platforms:	Any requirements or restrictions that the package may
>		have in terms of hardware or software (OS) platforms.
>		The programming language the package is written in should
>		be included.
>
>Copying-Policy:	The status of the package for copying purposes. (See Note
>		<2>)
>
>Keywords:	Keywords appropriate for users trying to locate the
>		package
>
Frequently keywords are _exactly_ the same as the one line resume.
By the way, look at yours exemples... Indexing the description will
gave the same result...
But we were doing exactly the same thing, using the same words for
indexing as the ones used for our short (one line) 
resume and our description.
The second problem is that there is no standard list of keywords for 
indexing software, and each of us is using a different one :-)...

So we decide to drop keywords...

>
>Notes on this file.
>
><1> The most common entries for this field would be "Public Domain" or
>    "Freely Redistributable" or "Voluntary Payment" (shareware). However
>    since a record may exist for software packages not resident on the
>    AFA, this field may be entered as "Proprietary" or some other form of
>    restricted access

Robert Ge'rin-Lajoie, Chef des laboratoires,	<[e-mail]>
De'partement IRO, Universite' de Montre'al				
CP 6128, Succ A,				Tel: [phone]
Montre'al,Canada, H3C 3J7			FAX: [phone]