Re: Bug#361418: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
I went on and made a list of applications that are currently found in Science [science] and another one with these applications roughly sorted into sections [science_sorted]. The short version: Analysis [10] Astronomy [12] Biology [16] Chemistry [11] Geoscience [5] Medicine [1] Physics [5] Social [0] Undetermined [4] Total: 64 Note that this is a number of different _packages_ that contain entries in Science. Many packages contain more than one entry, some are built from single source, etc. Take with a grain of salt. Now more on my findings. I was surprised not to find a single application suitable for Social section. There certainly are some, but they seem to be scattered all over the menu. gnomesword is in Education, for example. There may be intersection between Text, found in current menu draft, and what Social should be. Currently Text mostly contains dictionaries, but if Social is to be created, it is likely to contain dictionaries only. Therefore Text needs to be revisited. I have only located a single medicine-related application, but there are more in other sections. The whole bunch of gnumed-* packages is a good example. I added another section named Analysis, that contains general data analysis/plotting/calculation applications. I find them very similar to what is found in Math, so I consider moving Mathematics to Science a good idea. Undetermined is by no means a section name. This is where I listed applications that I think might belong to some other section, or could not determine an appropriate one. klogic- electronics megahal - ??? pybliographer - data management praat - ??? In my previous post I suggested moving Electronics and Engineering to Science. My words are still valid. I would prefer to continue this discussion on debian-policy, as it is getting hard to follow. arb - [Biology] Integrated package for data handling and analysis avida-qt-viewer - qt viewer for avida blast2 - Basic Local Alignment Search Tool boxshade- [Biology] Pretty-printing of multiple sequence alignments cassbeam- A program for Cassegrain antenna modelling celestia- A real-time visual space simulation (KDE frontend) celestia-glut - A real-time visual space simulation (GLUT frontend) celestia-gnome - A real-time visual space simulation (Gnome frontend) chemtool- Chemical structures drawing program clustalw- [Biology] Global multiple nucleotide or peptide sequence alignment clustalx- [Biology] GUI for clustalw dx - OpenDX (IBM Visualization Data Explorer) - main package earth3d - Map client displaying a 3D model of the world fityk - general-purpose nonlinear curve fitting and data analysis g3data - extract data from scanned graphs garlic - A visualization program for biomolecules gdis- molecular display gdpc- visualiser of molecular dynamic simulations ghemical- A GNOME molecular modelling environment gperiodic - periodic table application ifrit - a powerful tool for visualizing 3-dimensional data sets imview - Image viewing and analysis application ygraph - Visualize one-dimensional scientific data kalzium - chemistry teaching tool for KDE kboincspy - monitoring utility for the BOINC client klogic - digital circuit editor and simulator for KDE kstars - desktop planetarium for KDE kst-bin - A KDE application used for displaying scientific data kxterm - Cernlib's KUIP terminal emulator leksbot - An explanatory dictionary of botanic and biological terms libncbi6-dev- NCBI libraries for biology applications (development files) lynkeos.app - Tool to process planetary astronomical images for GNUstep loki- [Biology] MCMC linkage analysis on general pedigrees megahal - conversation simulator that can learn as you talk to it mn-fit - interactive analysis package for fitting data and histograms mssstest- Normalisation of disease scores for patients with Multiple Sclerosis ncbi-tools-bin - NCBI libraries for biology applications (text-based utilities) ncbi-tools-x11 - NCBI libraries for biology applications (X-based utilities) njplot - [Biology] A tree drawing program paje.app- generic visualization tool (Gantt chart and more) paw - Physics Analysis Workstation - a graphical analysis program paw++ - Physics Analysis Workstation (Lesstif-enhanced version) perlprimer - [Biology] graphical design
Re: Bug#361418: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
I added another section named Analysis, that contains general data analysis/plotting/calculation applications. I find them very similar to what is found in Math, so I consider moving Mathematics to Science a good idea. Again: we see that scientists make heavy use of mathematics, so all mathematics packages should be classified under Science? We might as well file all mathematics packages under Economics for the same reason. I think it's wonderful that scientists get so much value out of mathematical software, but they are not the only ones -- why does this mean that every piece of mathematical software needs to be filed in the science drawer? Currently mathematics and science have their own sections in all the places I frequent (debian archive sections, the KDE menu, the debian menu system); this seems quite sane to me, and it's not clear to me why this needs to be changed. Ben. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#361418: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
The cool thing about this is that nothing would ever get moved to adifferent branch of the menus, so as the menu changed, it would still be easy to find the app one is searching for. The length/depth of thebranch would just change to keep the aspect ratio reasonable.Maybe this is just crazy, but what does everyone think? If it is well thought out and not buggy, then it would be a very cool menu indeed. One problem that might arise is if a program, for instance, is classified as physics by the menu, but the user has classified the program in their head as chemistry before the menu subdivides and thus has trouble finding it. Of course, if they use the program frequently they would not be using the menu at all, so this is a small point.
Re: Bug#361418: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
On Sun, May 14, 2006 at 06:20:25PM +0200, Thomas Walter wrote: Hello, From my point of view this 2 section names are arbitrary and too global. It also opens a long discussion about the hirarchy. I think Mathematics is also part of Science. At least for application like axiom, octave, mathematica, ... So having a Math section in parallel to Science could be for more calulator oriented SW. Well most mathematical software I know are oriented toward doing computation. In general, my understanding of Science is in the sense of research and not education. Thus an example breakdown within Sience could be like Mathematics Physics Bio Chemistry Astronomics Geology Could you provide packages list to flesh these sections ? where some applications or tools can be part of several sub-sections. Perhaps applications which could be used in nearly all sub-sections could go into a General or Common Section. We absolutly try to avoid catch-all subsections because they tend to be used as dumping ground for anything that do not fit in the structure instead of leading people to improve the structure. In parallel to section Science have a section Education. Education is listed in the draft: Education Educational and training software. gtypist, gcompris, quiz Cheers, -- Bill. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#361418: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
On Sun, May 14, 2006 at 05:57:31PM +0200, Francesco Pietra wrote: I received this message after I answered Bill Allombert. The list below is a reasonable one, when Bio is written in full Biology and medicine is added; medicine is largely biology but with special needs. I disagree with the distinction science/education. Scientific education is science, or ideally it should be. Most discoveries spring from students doing a thesis work, which is education. Arrhenius set the a large section of the basis of chemistry (and thereby of biology chemistry agronomy etc etc) while a student under education (although - being too much ahead of the times - he was blamed for his ideas). In the context of menu, we should consider the categorisation from a functionnal perspective: How the user interact with the tool ? Software that assert knowledge and/or capability of users (arithmetic quizzing, typing tutor) or whose purpose is to teach a determined set of knowledge to the user are in Education. Software that let the user to observe, process or compute freely with scientific data are in Science. Of course scientific softwares will be used for educational purpose, and some softwares will have both purpose. Consider the Games section: Instead of classifying games by topic (Sci-Fi, Heroic Fantaisy, animals, cartoon,etc.) which would lead to an almost infinite list with a lot of intersection) we classify them by the way the user interact with the software (Action, Board, Card, etc.). Cheers, -- Bill. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#361418: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
On Sun, May 14, 2006 at 07:20:55PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote: On Sun, May 14, 2006 at 06:20:25PM +0200, Thomas Walter wrote: Hello, From my point of view this 2 section names are arbitrary and too global. It also opens a long discussion about the hirarchy. I think Mathematics is also part of Science. At least for application like axiom, octave, mathematica, ... So having a Math section in parallel to Science could be for more calulator oriented SW. Well most mathematical software I know are oriented toward doing computation. And most mathematics is oriented towards stating and proving theorems. I think there is software that supports theorem proving. Tex provides special support for stating theorems in the international language of mathematics. To me, scientific software is software that supports scientists in their work as scientists. This is not a very restrictive definition. It does, for me, carry some connotation that the user expects to understand what the software is doing. But I am aware of many instances where this is not true. This is in contrast to Accounting Software where the user hopes that he can keep himself and his business out of trouble without understanding and the software developers try to satisfy that hope. In general, my understanding of Science is in the sense of research and not education. Thus an example breakdown within Sience could be like Mathematics Physics Bio Chemistry Astronomics Geology Could you provide packages list to flesh these sections ? where some applications or tools can be part of several sub-sections. Perhaps applications which could be used in nearly all sub-sections could go into a General or Common Section. We absolutly try to avoid catch-all subsections because they tend to be used as dumping ground for anything that do not fit in the structure instead of leading people to improve the structure. In parallel to section Science have a section Education. Education is listed in the draft: Education Educational and training software. gtypist, gcompris, quiz There is also the science of educational technique. How children learn and what works and doesn't work for various levels of child development. And what styles of training software are appropriate for various kinds of users. Cheers, -- Paul E Condon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#361418: Debian menu and the Apps/Science section
* Daniel Leidert [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006-05-15 01:25:57]: The latter is like: how to do integration or differentiation, waht are Newton's rules in gravity the first is like: when I apply several of the basic rules to these measurements under given constraints then one can proof the existance of a sub-particle for a few nano seconds in nuclear physics. Yes. But these are clear examples. I have a repository full of chemistry related packages. One e.g. supports a bunch of quantum chemistry packages. But it is designed to help users of these packages. The application itself doesn't teach anything, but it helps teaching quantum chemistry packages. So I just need a clear definition, when to put an application into Education and when to put an application into Science. I'd like to jump in a little bit here. I think this question (should an app go in Education or Science? or really any category for that matter) really might be best answered by the software authors themselves. I think they have a pretty good idea of what the primary purpose of their app is and what users use it for. This is why I'd like to see a push to provide .desktop (freedesktop.org compliant [1] and [2]) files to upstreams who can tweak the Categories if need be. On the Ubuntu side we made a big push to get .desktop files put in science apps for Dapper (to be released June 1) since we don't use the Debian menu system. We added about 45 .desktop files out of the ~450 packages we (MOTU Science team [3]) track. The next task is to get them upstream at least to Debian (via bug reports) and hopefully to the software authors. One reason I've pushed for this is that I'd like to see a Science menu in Gnome. Right now, science apps go in either Education, Other, or Graphics (for plotting apps) in the Gnome menu and more often than not they don't show up at all because they have no .desktop file. -Jordan Mantha [1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ [2] http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ [3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Teams/Science -- That's all very well in practice, but will it ever work in theory? -- G. Hill A tidy laboratory means a lazy chemist. -- Jöns Jacob Berzelius -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
