Re: Improving browsing and discoverability in the Packages Menu

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2015 08:23:51 -0800 raman <address@hidden> wrote: 

r> Many ways of filtering -- over and above the present "filter by
r> keywords" would be nice.

r> 1. Hide all installed/builtin packages 
r> 2. Hide packages from one or more repositories 

(Sorry for the late comment, I've been away.  I don't think this has
happened, though?)

It would be easiest, I think, to make the source repo, the package
status, and other metadata (signed, etc.) into keywords and then enhance
the keyword browsing.  The "filter" functionality Stefan suggested makes
sense across keywords *and* package names and descriptions, and can
easily be plugged into the current "Filter" function in the menu.

r> 3. Hide helper packages eg packages  that would only be installed as a
r> dependency of something else that is user-facing 

I don't think it's good to ever hide those, but maybe they could be
given the "required-by=user-level-package" tags (multiples would be OK)?
And then in the UI they could be presented in a visually different way.
But hiding them would be a problem if you end up installing things you
didn't want.

Ted