Package categories, Application Manager, and other developments

Harassment of package maintainers is still ongoing, but the responses so far have been quite good (no negative responses, yet, but more than a few non-responders which could be taken a few ways). A few packages have already been updated with section fixes, and I even managed to get a positive response from Boingo (thanks Marcell)!

The package categorization discussion has started to net some interesting results. Andrew Flegg proposed to use the freedesktop.org specifications as our base for developing our category list. Which makes sense, as aligning with an upstream increases consistency and helps reduce confusion. David Greaves makes a good point when he says that the freedesktop.org specification feels outdated and somewhat inappropriate for the type of device we use. Getting the specification updated might be the correct approach, but we'll see what happens.

A good set of categories isn't much use if the software doesn't make them useful (as is true of the current Application Manager). As such, Andrew Flegg began hacking on the Application Manager source today, and has already put together patches for bug #2710 and bug #3103. I've also filed bug #3822 for the corresponding changes to the application menu.

On another front, Carsten Munk's (of Deblet fame) reply to the discussion about Maemo's alignment with upstream bears some thinking on, and hopefully will hit home with Nokia.