Re: RFC: Better formatting for long descriptions

[Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org>]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 07:24:45AM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Quoting Michael Banck (mbanck@debian.org):
> 
> > > Please note that debian-l10n-english suggests using the enumeration
> > > style you mention for a2ps, when we're reviewing package
> > > descriptions...
> > 
> > What's the rationale?  So far, I was under the impression that "  * "
> 
> 
> A not very strong one, I'm afraid..:-)
> 
> IIRC, we once found some reference indicating a tendency for dashed
> enumerations to be an accepted "standard" but I can't quote this.
> 
> Another reason is the fact that we're using this in French
> translations....which is a bad reason..:-)
> 
> Another is that we had to choose something and, based on purely
> personal impressions, we were thinking that dashed enumerations were
> the majority (nobody really verified).

Well, ok; but your initial post to this thread made it sound like some
semi-or-mostly official description review process, so having to change
all my long descriptions to "  - " (after all, standardizing on one
format is the point of this thread) does not fill me with pure joy.  So
if I have to do that, I'd prefer having a reason like "80% of the
packages do it like that" or "this is the preferred form of itemization
in english according to ...", or something.  The above reasons do not
look very convincing to me.

So it would be great if some numbers could be brought up first (maybe
Andreas has a rough overview now, because he looked at the different
kinds of itemizations).

Again, I don't think enumerations are used that much (and if they are, a
lot of them are really itemizations I guess), but standardizing on
itemizations strikes me as useful.  Not just for packages.d.o HTML
output, but also for apt-cache show consistence etc.


Michael