Re: Is any future development needed on 'dir' files?

[Patrice Dumas]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 05:09:45AM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> I curate my own dir file carefully, and I think some GNU/Linux systems
> do so as well.  The one I'm looking at, some Gentoo GNU/Linux system,
> seems to have a fairly useful one.  Do you have a example of a messy
> dir file?

I am on a debian testing and my dir is somewhat messy, there are many
similar categories that are not well grouped, for example:

Compression
* Gzip: (gzip).                 General (de)compression of files (lzw).

Data Compression
* Lzip: (lzip).                 LZMA lossless data compressor

> 
>    This TODO entry seems to me to be still relevant.  But first it seems
>    to me that the categories in util/dir-example do not match the categories
>    in https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Category/All.
> 
> Is that a good idea that they should match? The two have different
> purposes, I think.

I have no idea on that matter, but it was what was used at the time the
categories were put in util/dir-example, unless I misinterpreted the
informations.  If it is unclear that this is the right source for
cactegories, it should be said more clearly, in particular at the
beginning of of util/dir-example, there is:

rms suggested that we follow the categories of the Free Software
  Directory (http://www.gnu.org/directory/) where possible, including
  `minimal' capitalization, that is, just the first word and proper nouns.

-- 
Pat