Christoph, Thanks for prodding again on this matter. I've been extremely busy. On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:05:03PM +0200, Christoph Haas wrote: > Dear list... > > the matter has been discussed at least twice already. Roberto C. Sanchez > brought the matter back up in January 2008. The response was very positive > but nobody wanted to implement that. Several Debian end users in my circle > would surely be happy about having screenshots available for GUI > applications to get a quick impression of how different GUI programs > look/feel like without tediously installing, trying and deinstalling them. > The "Description:" doesn't really give a good mental picture and different > maintainers choose different wordings there which makes applications hard > to compare by just reading the text. > > So I'd like to get things moving. I assume we had to do this: > > - Propose a new optional debian/control field "X-Screenshot:" pointing to > an URL serving an image file (PNG, JPG) > [debian-devel-announce as soon as we are ready?] I agree with other comments that this is not necessary. If the service is centralized (like the screenshots.d.n that you suggest below) then looking for non-existent screenshots should simply indicate that no such screenshot exists. > - Create a new tree on hg.debian.org to host screenshots. I'm not sure about this. But I personally am not a fan of hg. I think some sort of webservice that accepts signed uploads would be better. > - Alternatively provide a web service that hosts screenshots so that > packages can point to it (e.g. http://screenshots.debian.net/PACKAGE). > The service should also scale down the pictures to a reasonable > size suitable for thumbnail display (max 150x150). > (I can program that if needed. The only problem is probably > authenticating the maintainer. Maybe a simple email interface > checking PGP signatures will do. Needs further brainstorming.) Yes, I like this better. > - Change packages.debian.org to show the thumbnail from the > package's control file. I will work on a patch if desired. I don't think that this needs to reference the control file. Simply checking the web service should be sufficient. > - Add this feature to package managers (synaptic, kpackage, ...). > I don't know enough about GUI programming yet that I could possibly > help here. > > Actually that doesn't sound too hard. And it would be a neat little > service. Let me know what you think and please step forward if you are > already working on something like that. > > This time we will really do it. :) > I know I have really wanted to get started on this, but keep lacking the time. I feel like we can probably get something substantial started this time. Perhaps a meeting on IRC would be a good idea. Maybe on a Saturday to get maximum participation? Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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