Software Center should only display apps in their most specific XDG subcategory

[xteejx]

In USC, josm is in Education. This is not the correct category. It should probably come under Geography or Editing or something like that.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: josm (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.47-generic 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jul 28 22:21:18 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: josm
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Peter Thor (thor-peter)]

Thank you for your bug-report.

Which version of Josm are you running?
In version 0.0.svn3751-2ubuntu1 the category is both Education AND Geography.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

The version affected is the one in Natty as explained in the description, version 0.0.svn3751-2ubuntu1.
the problem is either the josm package, or the way USC handles packages with multiple categories (which seems a bit weird anyway).

[Peter Thor (thor-peter)]

Teej,
thanks. I am learning bzr and developing in general. From what I see this issue is probably solved by editing the file debian/josm.desktop to only include the Geography category in the debian distro.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Thanks Peter. I would debdiff it myself and attach a patch but really don't have enough time at the moment. If you are able to, please feel free. I see it's already been tagged bitesize so either way someone would be able to do it for a first delve into MOTU stuff if not :)

Thanks again.

[Peter Thor (thor-peter)]

Well I would do it if I knew how since this grew from an ubuntu distro issue to a debian distro.
I am not sure where the source code/package for debian is located nor do I feel confident in upstream development yet. I am targeting bitesize ubuntu bugs.

[David Paleino (dpaleino)]

This is not a bug in JOSM.

JOSM is listed in the correct categories, which are Education AND Geography. The available categories are listed at http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html .

This smells much like a USC bug, but, given I don't use Ubuntu, I'll leave to other people dealing with this bug.

However, it is NOT a bug in JOSM :)

Kindly,
David

[Peter Thor (thor-peter)]

Then I would say this is no bug since JOSM in Ubuntu in Natty is shown in both categories as intended.
Teej, can you confirm JOSM being shown in both categories, as intended?

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Why did you close my bug report? I think it's pretty obvious that it is still an issue.
Josm appears in both categories in USC, but the fact remains that this is not an education tool or software. It is for editing OpenStreetMap maps. I doubt that community would be too happy to find trigger happy 10 year olds messing up the map because this was put under "Educational".

The problem is in the Debian packaging, that's where we pull source from, so should be where it's fixed.
If in any doubt, ask the author if he would consider JOSM educational, I'm sure you'd get a plain response..."No" ;)

[David Paleino (dpaleino)]

Please don't play bug ping-pong.

I'm not going to change it in Debian -- "Education" is a parent category of "Geography", and it should be included.

Citing the freedesktop standard:

"... The list of Main Categories consist of those categories that every conforming desktop environment MUST support. By including one of these categories in an application's desktop entry file the application will be ensured that it will show up in a section of the application menu dedicated to this category. The list of Additional Categories provides categories that can be used to provide more fine grained information about the application. Additional Categories should always be used in combination with one of the Main Categories. ..."

That means, not everybody is using Gnome, or Unity, or whatever. One could also use a DE not supporting "Geography", so JOSM must fall inside "Education".

If there's a bug, it's in USC, since it shouldn't show a software in a main category, if an "additional category" is listed.

Closing again.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

If that is the case, with all due respect this should stay Confirmed. It's in the Ubuntu bug tracker, and can be assigned to USC which I'll do now.

[Jjed (jjed)]

Hello there,

The Software Center pulls this metadata from `josm` package itself and includes it in `app-install-data-ubuntu`. To fix this issue, correct the following line in "josm.desktop" in the `josm` deb.

 > Categories=Education;Geography;

This change will land in USC the next time we rebuild `app-install-data-ubuntu`.

[Jjed (jjed)]

Sorry, I somehow mentally skipped David's comment. There's nothing wrong with josm.desktop according to freedesktop.org. In my defense, bugs that falsely accuse USC of mis-indexing their apps are rather common. ;)

As to whether to mark this Invalid or WONTFIX bug---or to buck XDG standards and display `josm` as in another category---I'll leave that decision to others.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Generally it's a bad idea for bug summaries to contain the word "should". Usually there are multiple ways to fix a bug.

I don't have time to investigate this bug in detail right now, but it seems to be the same root cause as this:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2011-August/012027.html

Since the spec seems to be unmaintained, there's an opportunity for someone to take over and relax the top-level category restrictions. How those are then organized could then be left up to the client.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

'software-center' is no longer included in any currently supported release of Ubuntu. In a review of Papercuts tasks I'm closing this as it is no longer valid.