Debian Package Tags
General links
Team summary: Teams/DebTags
Website: http://debtags.alioth.debian.org
Documentation: http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/paper-debconf7/
- Services handled by the team:
Tagging interface: http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/todo.html
Popcon suggestions: http://people.debian.org/~enrico/popsuggest
Tag data: http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/tags/ and the Debian Packages file
Email contact: debtags-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
Request tracker: You can report bugs to the debtags package in the Debian BTS
Public IRC channel: #ekhis on irc.freenode.net (Freenode)
Debtags Wiki pages
debtags provides a system to download a database of package tags and keep it up to date. A package tag is a small label that gets attached to a Debian package to represent one of its qualities.
A package tag database in the system can enable advanced package search techniques, and advanced package browsing functions in programs that support it.
These pages gather ideas and discussions about Debian Package Tags
DebTagsFacets describes the various groups of tags
DebTaggingGuidelines has some advice for package taggers
http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/search.cgi search packages based on attributes
Useful ways of helping
- Help with writing documentation and little HOWTOs
- Someone in charge of maintaining the website and wiki pages
- People using debtags and its libraries in their applications, or making sample applications that make use of the libraries
Useful links
Cognitive Dimensions for Notations: some vocabulary to talk about notations and user interfaces (Enrico)
Faceted Classification of Information: finally I found something which is what Debtags is, and has a lot of literature to read about! (Enrico)
- Other Faceted Classification links:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.infodesign.facetedclassification/71 (in Italian) it is a message on a faceted classifications mailing list which cites a lot of pointers and names and other researches
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/ Online magazine on Information Architecture
The debtags web pages
The mailing list where people sometimes discuss about debtags
A discussion on "Nested Facets", which may apply (but not necessarily: needs investigation) to us
Pages mentioning debtags
A wiki page in which they gather suggestions on how to improve Debian, and also mention debtags
Google search about debtags
Thread in kde-debian-devel mailing list
Debtags deb file in a RPM package list 
Another thread mentioning debtags "(which IMHO are one of the most interesting tools for Debian package selection to come along perhaps since dselect)" (Thanks Mako! I'll have to offer you another beer
A CVS commit adding debtags support for libcapture
Taiwanese wiki mentioning debtags as "Further Reading"
Debian Planet debtags announcement
Debtags mentioned in another mailing list (in spanish)
UnofficialSargeReleaseIssues mentions debtags, too
Open Issues
These are some of the open issues in Debtags development. If you are interested in discussing one of them, please subscribe to debtags-devel:
- Localisation infrastructure for tag names and descriptions
- Design automatic methods to infer tags from existing package data;
for example, Javier Fernádez-Sanguino Peña suggested the use of TFIDF techniques to extract keywords from package descriptions.
- Find a good way to maintain the central Debian tag vocabulary
(technical infrastructure, people in charge of it)
- Build more infrastructure for "Adopting" tags, that is, having people who
take care of the correctness of the list of packages associated to a given tag