Re: length of a package extended description

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Sat, 2015-01-10 at 07:20:31 +0100, Christian PERRIER wrote:
> Please also note that identifying "lists" in package descriptions
> might be a very interesting thing to do, given the various way you
> (maintainers) all have to make lists, given the loose rules for
> writing package descriptions (just think about bullets not being
> standardized and neither are wordwrapping rules).
> 
> So, even shorter followup: what you suggest is impossible.....and will
> even break hundreds (thousands?) of existing translations. 

I also think it would be best to switch that Description to use list
syntax. Daniel Burrows prepared a policy proposal some time ago, and
did some analysis:

  <https://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude%3A%3AParse-Description-Bullets%3Dtrue>

the analysis might be outdated by now, but given that this aptitude
option has been on by default for a long time I'd expect problems would
have been reported over time. It would still be nice to standardize on
something like the above.

> So, no, "fixing" the "translators tools" is not an option. Whether or
> not texlive-* packages are "too long" is a debate I already had with
> Norbert in the bug report he mentioned. He gave a rationale which
> doesn't entirely satisfies me....but makes sense and I decided that we
> both have better things to do than argue over this...:-)

I think fixing translator tools would be an improvement, because it
would reduce translator work in other situations too, by chunking the
description on long lists (and not necessarily just for godzilla-sized
ones :).

Thanks,
Guillem