Re: "science" or "physics" category

[David Holland <dholland-pkgtech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 04:16:09PM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
 > > I propose to introduce a category for multiphysics software
 > > or to rename "biology" into "science" or "physics".
 > 
 > I am almost always opposed to renaming, given that our tools don't all
 > support it.
 > 
 > Ading "science" sounds reasonable; "physics" would lead to 12 new
 > categories, and it's important to keep the number of categories under
 > control.

I think we clearly need a new category, but I think it should be
"numerical" or "numerics" or something similar, because:

 - this is an established subfield of software;
 - it describes most or at least many of the things asau is working on;
 - "science" is way too general;
 - we shouldn't have both "science" and "biology" at the same time.

There is biology-specific software that should remain in biology/, and
I don't actually see that it's a problem if we grow a few more
sciences - I would say the limit we must not cross is having "ls" at
the top level generate more than one screenful, but unless we choose
silly names we can add something like 50%-100% more categories before
we reach that limit.

Meanwhile there are some categories we should get rid of, like mbone,
and ones that we should probably fold into others, like parallel and
possibly ham.

I don't suppose anyone knows a professional research librarian we
could dragoon into advising on the taxonomy?

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost