Octave-Forge: Proposal to improve package overview page

[Oliver Heimlich]

Hello,

during OctConf I have brainstormed with Carnë to make the list of Forge
packages [1] more accessible to the user. The current problems with the
list are:
 * It is just a list of package names, which are often not
meaningful—especially for acronyms (fpl, lssa, stk, ltfat, …). Users who
don't know the package have to read the description to understand its
purpose.
 * The package description can be unfolded on the page, but the
usability is bad (all collapsed by default whenever you enter the
page—thus can't be skimmed).
 * It looks boring (gray). You can't see that you can do great stuff
with the packages.
 * Having no structure at all if confusing. We tried to edit categories
for the packages, but that is not easy and doesn't help much.

Altogether, the current page does not invite the user to explore for new
packages.

Now I have prepared a first draft for a new version of this page, see
[2]. The basic ideas of the new design are:
 * A tighter, two-column design (links are closer to the package name)
 * Short descriptions for all packages are visible by default. Note that
these are even shorter than the current package descriptions to give a
quick overview.
 * Pictures give some orientation on the page, allow one to easily
identify a particular package, demonstrate the topic, and make it look
less boring.

If you like the new design, these are the next steps towards implementation:
 1. All packages need a “short description”. I suggest to use the
“Title” tag in the DESCRIPTION file for that purpose, which (AFAIK) is
used nowhere else and matches the purpose. The “short descriptions”
should follow the conventions for the first sentence in a documentation
string [3] and should not list the following boilerplate phrases: The
[Packagename] package/toolbox is a library of functions that allows one
to [XXX] for Octave. Instead it should be short and just read: [XXX]
 2. All packages need an icon. Luckily I have already prepared some ;-)
The idea is that the icon is independent of the package release and is
maintained by the Octave Forge maintainer (Carnë) and must be provided
only once (ideally by the package author). The icon should present the
topic of the package to new users, should be easily recognized by
specialists in the field, and ideally is a screenshot of some output
produced by the package. In the example [2], the secs*d packages have no
such icons and show a placeholder. Since it is a time consuming task to
prepare icons for all packages, the chosen ones certainly are not
perfect. Please provide betters ones if possible.
 3. I have already prepared patches for project-web and generate_html.
The transition should be a one time change and not affect the release
process of packages. Especially the individual package pages will not be
altered. The change will only affect the overview page of packages.

If you are interested, I can present more details. But first I want to
know your opinion on this proposal.

Best regards
Oliver


[1] http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.php
[2] http://octave.ln0.de/htdocs/packages.php
[3]
https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Documentation-Tips.html