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"Description improvement" probably not



(Please Respect my Reply-To.)

On dates ranging from 160 days ago until today, Martin Schulze wrote:
> Subject: <package> - Description improvement
> 
> Package: <package>
> Version: current
> Severity: minor
> 
> - Description: <not a complete sentence>
> + Description: <Not a complete sentence>
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 	Joey

It seems that Martin Schulze has an automated script that files these
nuisance bug reports on any new package that enters the archive with a
short description that is not capitalized as a sentence. I found out
about this in general after the third such bug was filed on my packages.
In filing that bug, Martin ignored my previous two protestations that I
am capable of calitalizing words on my own, and that I disagree that
this is necessary if the description is not a complete sentence.

This kind of mass bug filing should not be done without discussion on
debian-devel, even if it is spread out over a year's period. The only
existing discussion of the subject of capitalization of package short
descriptions was on debian-policy[1], and was inconclusive. If any of
these bugs belonged to my packages, I would close them out of hand, and
you might want to do so as well.

I _know_ that there are many many ways for anyone who has the least bit
of energy to improve the descriptions of Debian's packages. I myself
have filed hundreds on substantative bugs pointing out grammatical
errors, unclarities, bad English constructs, malformatting, audience
issues, and lots of other ways that package descriptions can be
improved, and have been glad to see the complaints lead to better
desciptions. Other developers have done very impressive work with
projects like the several ispell runs against the whole packages file.
But an automated script[2] that attempts to enforce an obscure point on
which we cannot come to a consensus is not any help at all.

-- 
see shy jo

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2002/debian-policy-200203/msg00100.html
[2] And if you're doing this by hand, you're just wasting twice as much time.

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