Re: Bug#77924: spelling error in message
Template: bsdmainutils/calendar_help
Type: note
Description: The Jewish and Hindi calendar files are outdated
The maintainer of this package needs some help to fix the Jewis and
Hindi calendar files.
.
The Jewish calendar in /usr/share/calendar/200[01]/ from the old
bsdmainutils package needs to be merged with the file in
/usr/share/calendar/ which comes from the FreeBSD CVS tree and have
to be updated every year.
The Hindi calendar exists only for 1999 and needs to be updated.
.
If you can help with these issues, please write to md@linux.it.
.
(Yes, this message will not go in the package for stable.)
I'm concerned about this message, not just as a specific instance, but as
evidence of a trend in debconf usage to display unnecessary notes.
I do not think it is appropriate to use debconf to bother every user of
a package with requests for help. Especially not when you ask the
question at high priority! That is a misuse of that prioriry level,
which should only be used to bring things to the user's attention that
it is rather important that they see. This message is not in that
category[1].
Wouldn't a note on debian-devel and perhaps -user too have had much the
same effect as abusing debconf to push this message in the face of every
user who is following unstable? Do you think that people who track unstable
on ten or twenty machines, and have configured debconf to only see
high-priority questions because they do not have *time* to deal with trivial
will get a little tired of seeing your note for each machine they upgrade?
--
see shy jo
[1] An example of an appropriate message to use the "high" priority is
something like "The data format used by this program has changed in
a non-backwards compatible fashion. You will need to manually convert
any data files you have created that are in the old format." Not
"Please help me." At best this message should be low priority, but I
question that it should be asked at all.
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