Re: Bug#209693: The package description does not follow Debian policy

[Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de>]

Joey Hess writes:
> Daniel Burrows wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 09, 2003 at 11:22:35PM +0200, Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de> was heard to say:
> > > why is this description not sufficient for administrators to decide on
> > > the installation of this package? I get the bad feeling you grepped
> > > for one line package descriptions and submitted bug reports?
> > 
> >   Just to provide some context, Matthias seems to be talking about this:
> > 
> > Package: python-numarray-doc
> > Description: Documentation for an array processing package for Python
> >  This package contains the manual in PDF format.
> 
> The problem with the extended description here is not that it is one
> line long. The problem is that extended descriptions may be displayed
> independent from short descriptions, and "This package contains the
> manual in PDF format." does not stand on its own.

hmm, on one side lintian detects descriptions where the long
description contains the short description, on the other hand the long
description should stand on its own. I wasn't aware of this. Does this
make really sense? Are there cases where the long description is used
without the short description?

	Matthias