[gobolinux-users] Web based recipe browser

[Jonas Karlsson]

2007/3/3, mpb <mpb.mail at gmail.com>:
> On 3/3/07, Jonas Karlsson <jonka750 at student.liu.se> wrote:
> > However I've a hard time gettings an overview of what recipes exist
> > when I first get to the page.
>
> I think the solution to this is to create categories similar to Gentoo
> or FreeBSD.  Categories would be informational only (no changing
> recipe names).  Recipes could have an optional "category=<category>"
> line.  You could then drill-down to the recipe you want.  (Of course,
> this means I would have to 'tar xjf' every .bz2 file to parse the
> categories.  Right now recipes are only extracted on demand, when they
> are viewed.)
>
> Or I guess I could create my own mapping of recipe names to
> categories.  Then none of the recipes would have to be changed, and
> category information could be stored outside of the recipes.  That
> might be cleaner all round.
>
Yes, an external file mapping recipe with category (ies) would be better imo.

> > I think that default sort order should
> > be by name, as it's that one is primary interested of  when one get to
> > the page. Sorting by age is only interesting when one filter, imo.
>
> There are so many recipes I don't think it matters which order they
> are in when you first visit the page.  I decided I prefered to see
> recent recipes.
>
No, you're right. There are too many recipes to get a good overview at
first visit anyway.

Another idea is to make the headings clickable and sort the page accordingly.

> Besides, the "Latest Recipes" rss feed on the GoboLinux.org homepage
> is 52 days out of date, I believe.
>
> > Also it's hard to read when the text is that big and bold and spacing
> > is that smal, but that's only a small issue. Use more of of the screen
> > width.
>
> More width?  Or more height?
>
More balance. I stopped and thought of what made me have a hard time
with teh layout and I came to the conclusion that there's too much
weight to the left side of the page (on my resolution, 1280) with the
bold, large text at the left and the right half of the page consists
only of white space.

> I didn't know how attached people were to the fonts on the current
> recipe search, so I tried to use exactly the same fonts wherever
> possible, even though in both our opinions the font is too large and
> too bold.
>
It's too large and too bold to be displayed by itself. It's larger on
your page then on the recipe/package search at the same time that on
the gobolinux site, the names are displayed together with the URL, at
the same time that the text is more centered making that page lighter
.

After have looked at the page some more I'd like a datestamp anyway.
Even if age is better at a glance, it's hard to know what date a
recipe was created, to compare with programs installed, so one know if
the recipe is newer than what's installed on my system.

-- 
/Jonas