[Debichem-devel] Metapackages for DebiChem?

[Filippo Rusconi]

Greetings scientists,

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 11:15:17PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
 
> First off, make sure the debtags for them are adequate, on my (testing)
> system, I see for massxpert:
> 
> Tag: field::chemistry, implemented-in::c++, qa::low-popcon,
> role::program, uitoolkit::qt

You are absolutely right. I lacked time recently. I tried, however, to
tag at best the software of which I maintain the packages right now
(www interface at http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/edit.html).

I also set the field::TODO tag for three of them

massxpert, mmass, lutefisk

because I think that two more tags would be helpful:

field::biology:mass-spectrometry
field::chemistry:mass-spectrometry

because mass spectrometry is really a scientific field _per se_
nowadays.

One alternative would be to create tags like these:

field::biology:spectroscopy:mass
field::chemistry:spectroscopy:mass

I think that this would be interesting because there are tons of kinds
of spectroscopies (Raman, infrared, NMR, mass...), particularly in
chemistry (in biology, mass & NMR are the most prominent).

But then, one would ask if a field:spectroscopy tag would not be
better, with which to tag all the corresponding software (merging
chemistry and biology packages).

As a side note, one problem might be that biologists call mass
spectroscopy mass spectrometry. In fact the term 'spectrometry' is
getting wide adoption, superseding the 'spectroscopy' term even in
chemistry. But this is of no great concern, I think.

In conclusion, I do not have a definitive solution, but the
alternatives could be:

1)

field::biology:mass-spectrometry
field::chemistry:mass-spectrometry

2)

field:spectroscopy

I hope this helps.


Best regards,
                 Filippo

-- 
Filippo Rusconi, PhD - CNRS - public key C78F687C
Author of ``massXpert''     at http://www.massxpert.org