Curating the metadata in the Software application

[Ryan Lerch]

IMHO, Software is a very important application in the Workstation 
concept, however much of the appdata needs refinement and curation to 
make it even more useful to Fedora Workstation users.

What it be a good idea to start up a team of some sort to start up this 
process?

A little unsure of the best way to approach improving this part of the 
Workstation for our users.

cheers,
ryanlerch

[Elad Alfassa]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Ryan Lerch <rlerch(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  IMHO, Software is a very important application in the Workstation
> concept,
>  however much of the appdata needs refinement and curation to make it even
>  more useful to Fedora Workstation users.
>
>  What it be a good idea to start up a team of some sort to start up this
>  process?
>
>  A little unsure of the best way to approach improving this part of the
>  Workstation for our users.
>
>  cheers,
>  ryanlerch
>  --
>  desktop mailing list
>  desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop 

If you find any issues with app descriptions, or missing app descriptions,
or missing screenshots, simply submit patches upstream.



-- 
-Elad Alfassa.

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Fri, 2014-06-27 at 11:47 -0400, Ryan Lerch wrote:
>  IMHO, Software is a very important application in the Workstation 
>  concept, however much of the appdata needs refinement and curation to 
>  make it even more useful to Fedora Workstation users.
>  
>  What it be a good idea to start up a team of some sort to start up this 
>  process?
>  
>  A little unsure of the best way to approach improving this part of the 
>  Workstation for our users.
>  
>  cheers,
>  ryanlerch 
A few slightly-related thoughts:

Appdata Complaint #1: I've found it very difficult to take good
screenshots for my applications (the GNOME games). Most are intended to
run in small windows, and do not look good when resized to 16:9. Some
are unresizable. And Richard's screenshot window sizer extension is
broken for apps with header bars, so my screenshots aren't even at
appropriate sizes. I want to do better, but I'm not sure how.

Appdata Complaint #2: There's no standard on when to use the
<project_name> tag. I use it for games with generic names, so that the
software center displays "GNOME Chess" rather than simply "Chess,"
but
other apps with generic names do not use it.

Appdata Compliant #3: The <project_group> tag is also not used
consistently. I'm not sure how many GNOME apps actually declare
themselves to be in the GNOME project group.

[Ryan Lerch]

On Fri 27 Jun 2014 11:50:47 AM EDT, Elad Alfassa wrote:
>  On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Ryan Lerch <rlerch(a)redhat.com
>  <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>      IMHO, Software is a very important application in the Workstation
>      concept, however much of the appdata needs refinement and curation
>      to make it even more useful to Fedora Workstation users.
>
>      What it be a good idea to start up a team of some sort to start up
>      this process?
>
>      A little unsure of the best way to approach improving this part of
>      the Workstation for our users.
>
>      cheers,
>      ryanlerch
>      --
>      desktop mailing list
>      desktop(a)lists.fedoraproject.__org
>      <mailto:[e-mail]>
>      https://admin.fedoraproject.__org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
>      <https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop>
>
>
>  If you find any issues with app descriptions, or missing app
>  descriptions, or missing screenshots, simply submit patches upstream.
>  
That is all well and good (and i have contributed 60+ screenshots in 
the past), so I know how it works. But the idea behind something more 
formal would be to create a task list of apps that need better data, so 
anything that is filed upstream is recorded. Also the software 
application has the concept of  Featured applications, which we need to 
curate and focus more on Fedora's target audience.

regards,
Ryanlerch

[Richard Hughes]

On 27 June 2014 17:59, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro(a)gnome.org&gt; wrote:
>  Appdata Complaint #1: I've found it very difficult to take good
>  screenshots for my applications (the GNOME games). Most are intended to
>  run in small windows, and do not look good when resized to 16:9. Some
>  are unresizable. And Richard's screenshot window sizer extension is
>  broken for apps with header bars, so my screenshots aren't even at
>  appropriate sizes. I want to do better, but I'm not sure how. 
I think without making the details page in gnome-software resize and
reflow (which we don't really want to do) we really have to ask for
16:9 screenshots. I'm sure we can work on the padding+resizing
algorithm, as that does some pretty brain-dead things (like resizing a
760x431 image to 752x423) sometimes.

>  Appdata Complaint #2: There's no standard on when to use the
>  <project_name> tag. 
This is what we've been working on
http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/sect-Metadata-Applicat...
-- it's for version 0.7 of the spec, but applies equally well on older
versions.

>  I use it for games with generic names, so that the
>  software center displays "GNOME Chess" rather than simply "Chess,"
> but
>  other apps with generic names do not use it. 
You mean <name> then, not <project_name>. What I would do in this case
is have "Chess" as the name in the .desktop file, and "GNOME Chess"
in
the AppData file.

>  Appdata Compliant #3: The <project_group> tag is also not used
>  consistently. I'm not sure how many GNOME apps actually declare
>  themselves to be in the GNOME project group. 
Right, the metadata extractor uses a few different heuristics[1] to
try and set the <project_group> if not already set as this is very
important so that we prioritize GNOME apps on GNOME, and KDE apps in
KDE. We've actually added a <project_name> tag if you want to show
something translatable in the software center, e.g. "The GNOME Chess
Developers" rather than falling back to the untranslated
<project_group>.

Richard

[1]
https://github.com/hughsie/appstream-glib/blob/master/libappstream-builde...

[Richard Hughes]

On 27 June 2014 18:21, Ryan Lerch <rlerch(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  That is all well and good (and i have contributed 60+ screenshots in
> the
>  past), so I know how it works. But the idea behind something more formal
>  would be to create a task list of apps that need better data, so anything
>  that is filed upstream is recorded. 
Yes, this would be a good idea. Apps that we can verify have good
quality and up to date AppData before every release. Additionally,
writing AppData like you have done for Firefox where it's very hard to
push it upstream surely must continue, and I think the
fedora-appstream dump is probably the right place for those cases. We
probably ought to translate some of those too.

>  Also the software application has the
>  concept of  Featured applications, which we need to curate and focus more on
>  Fedora's target audience. 
This is important also, and certainly needs a refresh for 3.13.x
already. We also need to start identifying better ways of suggesting
applications, e.g. if I have GIMP and Inkscape installed, MyPaint is
probably more relevant than Geary. We couldn't do this before as so
few apps had AppData, but nowadays things are looking distinctly more
rosy[1].

Richard

[1] http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/screenshots/f21/status.html

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Fri, 2014-06-27 at 19:30 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
>  I think without making the details page in gnome-software resize and
>  reflow (which we don't really want to do) we really have to ask for
>  16:9 screenshots. I'm sure we can work on the padding+resizing
>  algorithm, as that does some pretty brain-dead things (like resizing a
>  760x431 image to 752x423) sometimes. 
:/  I'm really at a loss for what to do here. For some games, I've
placed windows side-by-side, and have a screenshot of them both
together. For others I zoomed in and cropped. Either way looks pretty
bad.

>  This is what we've been working on
>  http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/sect-Metadata-Applicat...
>  -- it's for version 0.7 of the spec, but applies equally well on older
>  versions.
>  
>  You mean <name> then, not <project_name>. What I would do in this case
>  is have "Chess" as the name in the .desktop file, and "GNOME Chess"
> in
>  the AppData file. 
OK, so it seems like it'd be good to go through GNOME and start adding
the <project_name> tag to all the appdata files, so the software center
shows GNOME Files, GNOME Documents, etc. instead of the generic names.
And <project_group> as well. I can do this for the core apps if this is
what you want to happen?

>  Right, the metadata extractor uses a few different heuristics[1] to
>  try and set the <project_group> if not already set as this is very
>  important so that we prioritize GNOME apps on GNOME, and KDE apps in
>  KDE. We've actually added a <project_name> tag if you want to show
>  something translatable in the software center, e.g. "The GNOME Chess
>  Developers" rather than falling back to the untranslated
>  <project_group>. 
Just GNOME is fine for me; no need to translate that!

[Bastien Nocera]

----- Original Message -----
>  On Fri, 2014-06-27 at 19:30 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
>  > I think without making the details page in gnome-software resize and
>  > reflow (which we don't really want to do) we really have to ask for
>  > 16:9 screenshots. I'm sure we can work on the padding+resizing
>  > algorithm, as that does some pretty brain-dead things (like resizing a
>  > 760x431 image to 752x423) sometimes.
>  
>  :/  I'm really at a loss for what to do here. For some games, I've
>  placed windows side-by-side, and have a screenshot of them both
>  together. For others I zoomed in and cropped. Either way looks pretty
>  bad. 
A developer tool should be shipped with gnome-software (in a sub-package I guess),
that consumes an uninstalled app-data file (possibly untranslated?) and shows what it
would look like in the full application.

This debug/test tool could be seen as a UI version of the appdata validation tools.

Right now, the test cycle is just too long (or I haven't figured out how to
test those appdata files without actually shipping them in Fedora, or creating my
own repositories).

Does that sound sane? Want me to file a bug?

Cheers

[Richard Hughes]

On 27 June 2014 22:59, Bastien Nocera <bnocera(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  A developer tool should be shipped with gnome-software (in a
> sub-package I guess),
>  that consumes an uninstalled app-data file (possibly untranslated?) and shows what it
>  would look like in the full application. 
Yes, makes sense to me. At the moment with git master you can install
an appdata and desktop file in any of the datadirs, and the
application will use the data (except screenshots), although I don't
know how easy that is.

>  Want me to file a bug? 
Please.

Richard

[Bastien Nocera]

----- Original Message -----
>  On 27 June 2014 22:59, Bastien Nocera <bnocera(a)redhat.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  > A developer tool should be shipped with gnome-software (in a sub-package I
>  > guess),
>  > that consumes an uninstalled app-data file (possibly untranslated?) and
>  > shows what it
>  > would look like in the full application.
>  
>  Yes, makes sense to me. At the moment with git master you can install
>  an appdata and desktop file in any of the datadirs, and the
>  application will use the data (except screenshots), although I don't
>  know how easy that is.
>  
>  > Want me to file a bug?
>  
>  Please. 
For reference:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732466