Re: Request for improve a package description

[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