Re: Improving browsing and discoverability in the Packages Menu

[Artur Malabarba]

2015-04-20 19:17 GMT+01:00 Drew Adams <address@hidden>:
> (Sure wish you would send your emails as plain text, BTW.)

Haven't figured out how to that on my phone yet (so I'm switching to
the laptop just for you ;-). If it's any consolation, your pre-filled
emails look terrible on my phone too. :-)

> I for one (perhaps the only one) would object to that.  There is no
> reason to "warn" users about libraries that are not doing anything
> even potentially wrong - and that includes using `Keywords' in a
> file header that you might never have heard of.
> [...]
> The problem is that you are referring to "the keywords system".
> And you are trying to shove it into a particular use case.
>
> File-header fields (keywords) that have been around for quite
> some time should be left as is (and this should have included
> `Version').  You can add whatever other fields you like, and
> make their use as restrictive or helpful with as many warnings
> or preventions as you like.  No problem.

Thanks. I do see your point in all of that.I just wish we had some way
to polish things out a little bit.f This not even for the sake of
package.el, but for the keywords as a whole.

For instance, there are 3 different mode-line keywords: mode-line,
modeline, and mode line. The last two contain a single package each,
both of which will not show up if the user looks for the "mode-line"
keword.
A similar thing happens with `package' vs `packages', application vs
applications, buffer vs buffers, bookmark vs bookmarks, etc.
Not to mention a number of keywords which are just plain senseless
like: "$", "$date:", "/", "09:41:07", "2015/01/12", and ":".

These don't just affect the package menu. These also pollute the
finder keywords menu, and pretty much anywhere else they show up.

I understand a warning may not be the way of doing that, but it would
be nice if we could help developers standardize these a little. And
I'll appreciate further suggestions.
It's clear that whoever used "modeline" as a keyword simply didn't
know that mode-line is the commonly used one (and why should they
know, it's not in `finder-list-keywords'). And if they do (for
whatever reason) have the intention of using modeline instead of
mode-line, that's fine. I just want to avoid the accidental duplicates
by making developers more aware of the already existing keywords. I'm
don't want to prohibit duplicates or anything.