Re: Request for review: xz-utils package description
Some afterthoughts:
Justin B Rye wrote:
> XZ-format compression library
Maybe
XZ (and LZMA) format compression library
> The Lempel-Ziv/Markov-chain Algorithm gives memory-hungry but powerful
> compression (often better than bzip2) and fast, easy decompression.
I was wondering about whether xz-utils needed a middle paragraph to
bridge from this to XZ, but really it should be there from the start
as something more like:
XZ is the successor to the Lempel-Ziv/Markov-chain Algorithm, which
gives memory-hungry but powerful compression (often better than bzip2)
and fast, easy decompression.
Boilerplate can be a pain if it's yards of advertising fluff, but
done well it can be handy - paragraph one, what this software
suite's all about; paragraph two, why you'd install this particular
element.
(There's a counterargument that the payload should be in the first
line, but I'd say that's why we have a short description too.)
> The native format of liblzma is XZ; it also supports raw (headerless)
> streams and the older LZMA format used by lzma, but not 7-Zip's related
> format (see the package p7zip). Advantages of XZ include:
> [bulleted list goes here?]
If the bulleted list is worth having (either in this description or
the -dev one) it sounds as if it would be along the lines of:
* support for format-specific metadata (file magic for .xz files);
* configurable memory usage (low settings still give good results);
* can make use of extra memory during compression or decompression;
(I wish I could re-word that one as a noun phrase like the rest...)
* crc32 integrity checking;
* familiar zlib-like low-level operation;
(if you can get away with spinning that as an advantage)
* support for variant compressor/decompressor implementations.
Oh, I should have connected the dots for myself about xz-lzma
providing the compatibility layer.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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