Re: Bug#220780: ITP: zope-zms -- Content management for science, technology and medicine

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net> wrote:

> "The package xlibs-client provides xFree86 client libraries"
>
> which is clearly wrong.
>
> But, if the first letter is decapitalised except when necessary (as
> above), one can insert it into sentences without a problem, and
> capitalise it unconditionally in cases when it is necessary (for
> example, when it begins a sentence).

I am all for consistency, so I am not opposed to the principle of having
the short description be a decapitalized "noun phrase" (not sure how it
is called), but the arguments given in this message and previous ones
are seriously flawed:

1. You are making the assumption that the first word of a short
   description can be safely capitalized (but not decapitalized, go
   figure why), which is clearly wrong in general.

2. You try to convince people of the advantages of the proposed "policy"
   (uh, that's wishful phrasing) by giving them the famous example of a
   sentence that could hypothetically be generated by a package manager,
   i.e. above:

      The package <package> provides <short description>.

   but I have yet to see a way to generate such sentences correctly for
   every short description possible (hint: with your proposal, you'd
   have to tell everyone to add the leading "a " back to all short
   descriptions whose object is not a plural. I am sure they will
   appreciate!).

Friendly,

-- 
Florent