Re: URLs on debian.org/distrib/packages pages
On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 08:36:43AM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > It does seem like a useful place, for other things that interpret
> > description fields... e.g. one could have a dselect-like program to browse
> > around the packages and be able to click through the links and start web
> > browsers... no need to drag out the copyright file (which is within the
> > package, not in the meta data).
> Great idea to fire up a browser from an apt frontend!!!
>
> But I would vote for an extra control field instead of "anywhere in the
> Description", because this would enable us to add lintian checks once
> this is included into policy (which hopefully will not be in a far
> distance).
And for the very good reason that a description field is supposed to be
for human consumption, not machine-parsed. If you start relying on
automated parsing of description fields then people will start writing them
with that, rather than the primary (human) audience in mind. Which would
be Bad.
It's fine to put URIs into the description, *if* it makes sense. It's not
fine to rely on them being there for the purposes that are being discussed.
Structured metadata was invented for a reason. Let's use it.
Cheers,
Nick
--
Nick Phillips -- nwp@lemon-computing.com
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
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