Categories in FreeGIS.org

[Silke Reimer]

Am Dienstag, 29. Mai 2007 16:41 schrieb Frank Warmerdam:
> Silke Reimer wrote:
> > 1. The category "applications" should be splitted into two parts
> > named "functionality" and "components".
> > Functionality should be splitted into
> > - visulization
> > - digitization
> > - reprojection
> > - file format transformation
> > - data management
> > - processing
> > - navigation
> > Components could be splitted into
> > - desktop gis
> > - webgis
> > - database
> > - library
> > - mobile gis
>
> Silke,
>
> I'm mildly supportive of this change though the word "components" doesn't
> really connect to the set of categories you have listed in my mind. 
> Perhaps this would be better titled something like "Role"?  It does seem
> like it will be hard to recategorize all the entries accurately.

I am fine with "Role" as well. You as a native speaker are probably much 
better in wording than me. Concerning the work: Yes, it will probably take 
some time for recategorization but in my opinion it is worth the effort.

> I presume a package can list more than one component as well as more
> than one functionality?

Yes, this is right.

>
> > 2.  A category about OGC should be introduced that has for each OGC
> > specification a single sub-category. One could even consider to have two
> > sub-categories, one for the server side and one for the client side. But
> > that is perhaps too much.
>
> I think it would be wonderful to have a category called "Standards" that
> listed a variety of OGC standards as well as potentially others (such as
> the ISO metadata standard).  I'm very supportive of this idea!

It's a good idea to enhance this to a general "Standards" category instead of 
sticking only to OGC-Standards.

>
> I'd also encourage, for some standards indicating whether client or
> server side is supported.  For instance, I'd like to be able to find
> a list of packages that are WMS clients without having to also wade through
> WMS servers.

Meanwhile I have the same feeling. 

> > My questions to you:
> > 1) Do you think that this reorganization is helpful?
> > 2) I assume that my list of sub categories is not complete. Which items
> > are missing?
> > If we agree that a reorganization of the categories is helpful I would
> > volunteer to do this step. This would mean
> > a) to intoduce the categories together with their subcategories. This
> > step is not problem with the FreeGIS.org portal.
> > b) to categorize every single entry according to the new categories. This
> > is of course a lot of work but still feasible through the administration
> > portal. The problem: The list of updates will be crowded by a lot of
> > entries just for recategorization. So my question is whether there are
> > better means to do the this tasks.
>
> It would be nice to have a way of marking an update as minor so it doesn't
> show up on the updates list.

This is certainly true, but currently the FreeGIS portal doesn't support this. 
It is the question whether it is worth the enhancement or whether it is not 
better to spend the time in other issues.

>
> PS. Sorry for not responding sooner.  As often happens, I thought others
> would have better answers than I, so I kept quiet.

Oh, don't worry. I totally understand this since I often have the same 
problem. Thanks for your answer!

I will see some of the FreeGIS people this evening at the Social Event of the 
Linuxtag (one of the larges GNU/Linux events) in Berlin. I hope that we can 
discuss this issue there - sometimes this is easier than to do it by mail.

Many greetings,

	Silke