Hi all, I'd like to work on a method to search for packages based off of recognized input file formats and recognized output file formats of the contained program(s). Maybe by MIME-type (RFC 2046), such as:
image/gif image/jpeg image/png image/tiff video/mp4 video/mpeg application/x-latex Here's the list of MIME-type assignments: http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/ However, I am by no means permanently attached to MIME. It would also be interesting to revise the typical --help message with some standardized markup for formally specifying which parameters would prefer what type of information. Typically, when I write my quick scripts, I just do a few print statements and spit out some text for help messages, and sometimes clean it up a bit, so to replace that laziness I'd have to write a tool to make that less of a pain, maybe throw it in next to autoproject or something. So, this might just mean an extra file in a package, with two lines, the first one for input recognized, the second one for types of output, but this of course isn't a good map for what each parameter will trigger in terms of output, esp. in programs that change output dependent on what it discovers about the input. Also, this only really works for single-program packages, otherwise this needs to be done at some other level, i.e. a file next to each binary? Is that where this should go?? Personally this seems kind of an obvious thing to do, but it hasn't happened yet, so I'm posting to ask specifically-- (1) Has this been proposed before? Can anyone give me names, links, addresses, or what went wrong? (2) Anything better than MIME for these purposes? (3) Search terms other than 'semantic shell', anyone? (4) What should I be asking? I've basically written up this email on a site as well- http://heybryan.org/shell.html Happy new year, - Bryan 1 512 203 0507 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org