Re: Request for improve a package description

[fabien boucher <fabien.dot.boucher@gmail.com>]

Hi,
First thanks for your help.
Yes synopses must differs, and your proposal seems good.
Indeed "Cross Platform" are not important in short desc and XML-RPC term
induces the "Cross Platform" term ...
Yes persistent HTTP/1.1 connections are those to exchange XML messages. 
For the long desc i think explaining that the library comes with an XML-RPC interface
description language is really important.
So following your point of view the rewrite could be : 

Package: libxr
Description: SSL-capable XML-RPC implementation - shared libraries
 This cross-platform XML-RPC library supports persistent HTTP/1.1
 connections over SSL. It comes with XML-RPC interface description
 language and client/server code compiler.

Package: libxr-dev
Description: SSL-capable XML-RPC implementation - development files
 This cross-platform XML-RPC library supports persistent HTTP/1.1
 connections over SSL. It comes with XML-RPC interface description
 language and client/server code compiler.
 .
 Development headers needed to compile programs that use libxr.

Package: libxr-dbg
Description: SSL-capable XML-RPC implementation - debug symbols
 This cross-platform XML-RPC library supports persistent HTTP/1.1
 connections over SSL. It comes with XML-RPC interface description
 language and client/server code compiler.
 .
 Debugging symbols useful for tracking down bugs in
 applications with libxr.

What's your point of view about the rewrite ?
Regards
Fabien

2009/11/9 Justin B Rye <jbr@edlug.org.uk>

fabien boucher wrote:
> Package: libxr
> Description: cross-platform XML-RPC client/server library

Well, for a start the three different packages should have three
different synopses.

As a non-programmer I have to admit I'm a bit out of my depth
dealing with this interface description language stuff.  Still, I
gather "cross-platform" means that there's a Windows version; but is
that really this library's only selling point important enough to go
in the short description?  Debian already seems to have quite a few
XML-RPC libraries...

So I suspect you want something along the general lines of:
 Description: SSL-capable XML-RPC implementation - shared libraries
 Description: SSL-capable XML-RPC implementation - development files
 Description: SSL-capable XML-RPC implementation - debug symbols

>  This library supports persistent HTTP/1.1 connections over SSL
>  and comes with XML-RPC interface description language and
>  client/server code compiler.

I didn't quite follow the structure of that sentence, but I see in
the README file "libxr has two parts, library itself and RPC
interface description language compiler (XDL compiler)".  That makes
it a bit clearer.

And presumably libxr doesn't support _arbitrary_ persistent HTTP/1.1
connections over SSL, just XMLRPCish ones.  I'd tentatively suggest:

  This cross-platform XML-RPC library supports persistent HTTP/1.1
 connections over SSL, and comes with a client/server XDL compiler.

(Unless I'm completely garbling it, which is possible.)

Then the other packages in the set just differ in their trailing
paragraphs:

[...]

>  This package contains development headers needed to compile programs
>  that use libxr.

That might or might not need an article ("the development headers
needed...").

[...]

>  This package contains debugging symbols useful for tracking bugs in
>  applications with libxr.

Do you mean "tracking" or "tracking down", or maybe "tracing"?
--
JBR     with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
       sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package


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