Re: description writing guide
On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 05:30:39PM -0500, Colin Walters <walters@debian.org> was heard to say:
> On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 14:01, David B Harris wrote:
>
> > I do have some differences of opinion, though. It's sad, but there are a
> > getting to be a fairly large number of DDs who are "attention grabbers".
> > Just a few days ago, I saw a package description that said something
> > along the lines of "this is the best package for this purpose" ... and
> > it certainly wasn't. Even if it was, I think everybody would agree that
> > that kind of language doesn't belong in a Debian package description.
>
> I would tend to agree; however, I don't think that more people will say
> stuff like "this is the best package" even if we treat descriptions as a
> form of advertising, simply because saying "this is the best" isn't an
> effective advertisement. I think it doesn't have a strong effect on
> people, because it doesn't say very much. At least, advertisements I
> see around me don't use that kind of language. Then again though, I'm
> not a marketing department :)
That might be true, but I would like to see language such as "best
package for foo" explicitly deprecated in the guide. I've even written
such stuff myself, back before I realized what the problems were.
(hopefully there isn't anything like that left in my packages :) )
> > Also, in the description template, two spaces are used after a period -
> > is that standard nowadays?
>
> I think this is an unresolved issue. I've added a section on this to
> the description writing guide.
On an unrelated topic, it would be nice if the description format
allowed whitespace to be collapsed/expanded on wordwrapped lines. The last
time I checked, it seemed to at least imply that whitespace was sancrosact,
and I found several packages that relied on this in their description.
(sorry, I don't remember which)
Daniel
--
/-------------------- Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org> -------------------\
| Genius may have its limitations, |
| but stupidity is not thus handicapped. |
\------- (if (not (understand-this)) (go-to http://www.schemers.org)) --------/
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