On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 08:51:12PM -0600, Bryan Bishop wrote: > I'd like to work on a method to search for packages based off of > recognized input file formats and recognized output file formats of > the contained program(s). Maybe by MIME-type (RFC 2046), such as:
I'm not really able to reconcile this paragraph about "searching packages on a recognized format basis" with the remaining part of your post ... Anyhow, debtags does offer a way to search for packages on the basis of which file format they "work with". Have a look at the "works-with-format" facet, e.g. in the debtags tag cloud [1]. It might be less specific than what you need, for example it does not consider the "direction" (input vs output) of the supported format. YMMV. [1] http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/cloud/ Cheers PS preserving the fully quoted version of your post, to the benefit of debtags-de...@l.a.d.o readers > image/gif > image/jpeg > image/png > image/tiff > video/mp4 > video/mpeg > application/x-latex > > Here's the list of MIME-type assignments: > http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/ > > However, I am by no means permanently attached to MIME. It would also > be interesting to revise the typical --help message with some > standardized markup for formally specifying which parameters would > prefer what type of information. Typically, when I write my quick > scripts, I just do a few print statements and spit out some text for > help messages, and sometimes clean it up a bit, so to replace that > laziness I'd have to write a tool to make that less of a pain, maybe > throw it in next to autoproject or something. > > So, this might just mean an extra file in a package, with two lines, > the first one for input recognized, the second one for types of > output, but this of course isn't a good map for what each parameter > will trigger in terms of output, esp. in programs that change output > dependent on what it discovers about the input. Also, this only really > works for single-program packages, otherwise this needs to be done at > some other level, i.e. a file next to each binary? Is that where this > should go?? > > Personally this seems kind of an obvious thing to do, but it hasn't > happened yet, so I'm posting to ask specifically-- > > (1) Has this been proposed before? Can anyone give me names, links, > addresses, or what went wrong? > > (2) Anything better than MIME for these purposes? > > (3) Search terms other than 'semantic shell', anyone? > > (4) What should I be asking? > > I've basically written up this email on a site as well- > http://heybryan.org/shell.html -- Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7 z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/ Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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