Re: Packages: an average 66321 bytes per line of description

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 07:07:46AM +0800, Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Anyway, one liner "snob" descriptions just have to go.
> 
> $ apt-cache show emacs21
> Description: The GNU Emacs editor
>  GNU Emacs is the extensible self-documenting text editor.
> 
> Oops, I see, it is self-documenting.

that's actually a perfectly adequate description.  it tells someone
who has never heard of emacs before that it is an editor.  good enough.

a description doesn't have to (and shouldn't!) summarise all of a package's
features, all it needs to do is give someone a rough idea of what kind of
beastie it is.

for a package like emacs, it's basically impossible to summarise all of its
features anyway.

craig