xfonts-intl-phonetic: package description review
Package: xfonts-intl-phonetic
Version: 1.2.1-8
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
I noticed a couple of minor spelling/language issues in the package
descriptions for xfonts-intl-phonetic and emacs-intl-fonts, and
naturally ended up reviewing the whole control file. (This isn't
connected to the review for fonts-gfs-neohellenic that just came up as
bug #680936 - I was already looking at this before then.)
[...]
> Package: xfonts-intl-arabic
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- Arabic
^ ^^
The debian-l10n-english house style (and DevRef) would recommend
lowercase "I" and single dash.
> This package includes some Arabic fonts (digits and single and double
> column). You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author
> documents written in any of the Arabic languages.
"Single and double column" should probably have "characters" on the
end, and "you will need the fonts" should probably say "these fonts".
The d-l-e house style would add a "Harvard" comma after "print" (and
that style is already used in most lists in these descriptions).
"The Arabic languages" looks like an error - you could write Urdu (an
Indo-European language) with these fonts but not Maltese (a form of
Arabic). Say "documents written in an Arabic script".
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: xfonts-intl-asian
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- Asian
> This package includes some Vietnamese, Indian, Lao, and Thai fonts.
> You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
> written in any of the languages mentioned above.
A nomenclature problem: Hebrew, Korean, and Uzbek are also "Asian",
but out of scope for this collection; so wouldn't it make sense to use
some slightly more specific geographical label for these? After all,
it's clearly a grouping by region rather than anything more
fundamental or it wouldn't include VISCII. Saying "(south-east)
Asian" is a bit unwieldy, but there's room for it in the synopsis.
Then, what sort of order is "Vietnamese, Indian, Lao, and Thai"?
I'm tempted to suggest "Indian and Indochinese"; that would
misleadingly suggest it includes Khmer, but then again I already
suspect that "Indian" overstates its coverage.
And finally, the things listed above aren't all languages, or even
individual scripts; "Indian" is a whole family of scripts. Perhaps
"languages/scripts" would be vague enough.
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: xfonts-intl-chinese
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- Chinese
> This package includes some GB2312, GB8565-88, BIG5 (ETen), and SiSheng
> Chinese fonts. You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author
> documents written in Chinese and using any of the encodings mentioned above.
"BIG5" should be "Big5" (it's not B.I.G.; it was developed by Taiwan's
top five IT firms). But I have no idea what "SiSheng fonts" would be;
isn't SiSheng a way of entering tone diacritics? Oh well, the rest of
it more or less makes sense.
(Why does this one, unlike for instance -arabic, go into so much
detail about encodings when the level of coverage makes encodings more
or less irrelevant? Couldn't it just say "documents written in
Chinese", and stop there?)
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: xfonts-intl-chinese-big
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- Chinese big
> This package includes some GB2312 big Chinese fonts.
> You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author
> documents written in Chinese and using any of the encodings mentioned above.
Since "big" here means simply "large point-size", it should probably
use the word "large" and not one that makes readers wonder whether it
has something to do with Big5 or big-endianness or extensive character
sets.
"Any of the encodings" isn't appropriate here.
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: xfonts-intl-european
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- European
> This package includes some ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1), ISO 8859-2 (Latin-2),
> ISO 8859-3 (Latin-3), ISO 8859-4 (Latin-4), ISO 8859-5 (Cyrillic),
> ISO 8859-7 (Greek), ISO 8859-8 (Hebrew), ISO 8859-9 (Latin-5), and KOI
> (Cyrillic) fonts. Also one ISO 8859-1 big font is included.
> You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
> using any of the languages/encodings specified above.
As I mentioned, Hebrew is Asian (and a member of the "Afroasiatic"
language family), but I suppose if Israel gets into the Eurovision
Song Contest then Hebrew might as well be in the European font package
too (and we'll forget about the other continents that use Latin-based
scripts). I'll just rephrase the line about the "big font", change
"languages" to "scripts", and call that done. The encodings are even
listed in a sensible order!
(But why do the different packages disagree about whether the
encodings/whatever are being "mentioned" or "specified"? Standardise
on just "the above encoding(s)".)
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: xfonts-intl-japanese
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- Japanese
> This package includes some JISX0208.1990, JISX0208.1978, JISX0212.1990
> (HojoKanji), JISX0208.1983, and JISX0201 (Roman & Kana) Japanese fonts.
> You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
> using the Japanese language and any of the encodings specified above.
Sort them, turn "&" into "and", and phrase the language/encodings part
the same way as for Chinese.
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: xfonts-intl-japanese-big
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- Japanese big
> This package includes some JISX0208.1983 and JISX0212.1990 (HojoKanji)
> big Japanese fonts.
> You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
> using the Japanese language and any of the encodings specified above.
Again "large" would be clearer than "big", and two still isn't enough
to say "any of".
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: xfonts-intl-phonetic
[...]
> Description: International fonts for X -- Phonetic Alphabet
> This package includes some fonts of International Phonetic Alphabet.
Insert definite article.
> You will need the fonts if you to view, print or author documents
> using the international phonetic alphabet. IPA is used, for instance,
> in dictionaries to represent the pronounciation of a word in a foreign
> language in a form common to all languages.
Well, the general idea is right, but
* it's inconsistent about the capitalisation;
* it misspells "pronunciation" (though in a native-speakerish way!);
* the details of the explanation are confused - there's nothing about
writing a velar nasal as [ŋ] that's "common to all languages". Try
"not specific to any language".
> .
> The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
>
> Package: emacs-intl-fonts
[...]
> Description: Fonts to allow multi-lingual PostScript printing from Emacs
Multilingual should be unhyphenated.
> This package includes BDF fonts to print Amharic, Arabic, Cantonese,
> Chinese, Czech, Danish, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, German,
> Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Maltese, Nederlands,
> Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Tigrigna,
> Turkish and Vietnamese text as bit-mapped PostScript. To see these
> languages in X, you can use the xfonts-intl-* packages (among others).
Nicely sorted, but s/Nederlands/Dutch/ and s/Tigrigna/Tigrinya/. Add
a Harvard comma and subtract an inter-sentence space.
* * *
So my revised versions look like this:
[...]
| Package: xfonts-intl-arabic
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - Arabic
| This package includes some Arabic fonts (digits and single and double
| column characters). You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print,
| or author documents written in an Arabic script.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: xfonts-intl-asian
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - (south-east) Asian
| This package includes some Indian, Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese fonts. You
| will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents
| written in the above languages/scripts.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: xfonts-intl-chinese
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - Chinese
| This package includes some GB2312, GB8565-88, Big5 (ETen), and SiSheng
| Chinese fonts. You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or
| author documents written in Chinese using the above encodings.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: xfonts-intl-chinese-big
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - large Chinese
| This package includes some large GB2312 Chinese fonts. You will need
| these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents written in
| Chinese using the above encoding.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: xfonts-intl-european
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - European
| This package includes some ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1), ISO 8859-2 (Latin-2),
| ISO 8859-3 (Latin-3), ISO 8859-4 (Latin-4), ISO 8859-5 (Cyrillic),
| ISO 8859-7 (Greek), ISO 8859-8 (Hebrew), ISO 8859-9 (Latin-5), and KOI
| (Cyrillic) fonts. One large ISO 8859-1 font is also included. You will
| need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents using
| the above scripts/encodings.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: xfonts-intl-japanese
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - Japanese
| This package includes some JISX0201 (Roman and Kana), JISX0208.1978,
| JISX0208.1983, JISX0208.1990, and JISX0212.1990 (HojoKanji) Japanese
| fonts. You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author
| documents written in Japanese using the above encodings.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: xfonts-intl-japanese-big
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - large Japanese
| This package includes some large JISX0208.1983 and JISX0212.1990
| (HojoKanji) Japanese fonts. You will need these fonts if you plan to
| view, print, or author documents written in Japanese using the above
| encodings.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: xfonts-intl-phonetic
[...]
| Description: international fonts for X - International Phonetic Alphabet
| This package includes some fonts of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
| You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents
| using the International Phonetic Alphabet. IPA is used, for instance, in
| dictionaries to represent pronunciations in a non-language-specific way.
| .
| The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
|
| Package: emacs-intl-fonts
[...]
| Description: fonts to allow multilingual PostScript printing from Emacs
| This package includes BDF fonts to print Amharic, Arabic, Cantonese,
| Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French,
| German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Maltese,
| Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Tigrinya,
| Turkish, and Vietnamese text as bit-mapped PostScript. To see these
| languages in X, you can use the xfonts-intl-* packages (among others).
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
diff -ru intlfonts-1.2.1.pristine/debian/control intlfonts-1.2.1/debian/control
--- intlfonts-1.2.1.pristine/debian/control 2012-07-06 00:17:16.000000000 +0100
+++ intlfonts-1.2.1/debian/control 2012-07-10 11:37:42.943392823 +0100
@@ -11,10 +11,10 @@
Replaces: intlfonts-arabic
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- Arabic
+Description: international fonts for X - Arabic
This package includes some Arabic fonts (digits and single and double
- column). You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author
- documents written in any of the Arabic languages.
+ column characters). You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print,
+ or author documents written in an Arabic script.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -24,10 +24,10 @@
Replaces: intlfonts-asian
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- Asian
- This package includes some Vietnamese, Indian, Lao, and Thai fonts.
- You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
- written in any of the languages mentioned above.
+Description: international fonts for X - (south-east) Asian
+ This package includes some Indian, Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese fonts. You
+ will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents
+ written in the above languages/scripts.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -37,10 +37,10 @@
Replaces: intlfonts-chinese
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, xfonts-intl-chinese-big, xfonts-cjk, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- Chinese
- This package includes some GB2312, GB8565-88, BIG5 (ETen), and SiSheng
- Chinese fonts. You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author
- documents written in Chinese and using any of the encodings mentioned above.
+Description: international fonts for X - Chinese
+ This package includes some GB2312, GB8565-88, Big5 (ETen), and SiSheng
+ Chinese fonts. You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or
+ author documents written in Chinese using the above encodings.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -50,10 +50,10 @@
Replaces: intlfonts-chinese-big
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, xfonts-intl-chinese, xfonts-cjk, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- Chinese big
- This package includes some GB2312 big Chinese fonts.
- You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author
- documents written in Chinese and using any of the encodings mentioned above.
+Description: international fonts for X - large Chinese
+ This package includes some large GB2312 Chinese fonts. You will need
+ these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents written in
+ Chinese using the above encoding.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -63,13 +63,13 @@
Conflicts: xfntil2 (<< 2.1), intlfonts-european
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, xfonts-biznet-iso-8859-2-base, xfonts-biznet-iso-8859-2-75dpi, xfonts-biznet-iso-8859-2-100dpi, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- European
+Description: international fonts for X - European
This package includes some ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1), ISO 8859-2 (Latin-2),
ISO 8859-3 (Latin-3), ISO 8859-4 (Latin-4), ISO 8859-5 (Cyrillic),
ISO 8859-7 (Greek), ISO 8859-8 (Hebrew), ISO 8859-9 (Latin-5), and KOI
- (Cyrillic) fonts. Also one ISO 8859-1 big font is included.
- You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
- using any of the languages/encodings specified above.
+ (Cyrillic) fonts. One large ISO 8859-1 font is also included. You will
+ need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents using
+ the above scripts/encodings.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -79,11 +79,11 @@
Replaces: intlfonts-japanese
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, xfonts-intl-japanese-big, xfonts-cjk, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- Japanese
- This package includes some JISX0208.1990, JISX0208.1978, JISX0212.1990
- (HojoKanji), JISX0208.1983, and JISX0201 (Roman & Kana) Japanese fonts.
- You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
- using the Japanese language and any of the encodings specified above.
+Description: international fonts for X - Japanese
+ This package includes some JISX0201 (Roman and Kana), JISX0208.1978,
+ JISX0208.1983, JISX0208.1990, and JISX0212.1990 (HojoKanji) Japanese
+ fonts. You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author
+ documents written in Japanese using the above encodings.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -93,11 +93,11 @@
Replaces: intlfonts-japanese-big
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, xfonts-intl-japanese, xfonts-cjk, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- Japanese big
- This package includes some JISX0208.1983 and JISX0212.1990 (HojoKanji)
- big Japanese fonts.
- You will need the fonts if you plan to view, print or author documents
- using the Japanese language and any of the encodings specified above.
+Description: international fonts for X - large Japanese
+ This package includes some large JISX0208.1983 and JISX0212.1990
+ (HojoKanji) Japanese fonts. You will need these fonts if you plan to
+ view, print, or author documents written in Japanese using the above
+ encodings.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -107,12 +107,11 @@
Replaces: intlfonts-phonetic
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
Suggests: xfs | xserver, emacs-intl-fonts
-Description: International fonts for X -- Phonetic Alphabet
- This package includes some fonts of International Phonetic Alphabet.
- You will need the fonts if you to view, print or author documents
- using the international phonetic alphabet. IPA is used, for instance,
- in dictionaries to represent the pronounciation of a word in a foreign
- language in a form common to all languages.
+Description: international fonts for X - International Phonetic Alphabet
+ This package includes some fonts of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
+ You will need these fonts if you plan to view, print, or author documents
+ using the International Phonetic Alphabet. IPA is used, for instance, in
+ dictionaries to represent pronunciations in a non-language-specific way.
.
The fonts are for use with the X Window System.
@@ -121,10 +120,10 @@
Depends: emacsen-common
Suggests: xfonts-intl-arabic, xfonts-intl-asian, xfonts-intl-chinese, xfonts-intl-chinese-big, xfonts-intl-european, xfonts-intl-japanese, xfonts-intl-japanese-big, xfonts-intl-phonetic
Enhances: emacs21
-Description: Fonts to allow multi-lingual PostScript printing from Emacs
+Description: fonts to allow multilingual PostScript printing from Emacs
This package includes BDF fonts to print Amharic, Arabic, Cantonese,
- Chinese, Czech, Danish, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, German,
- Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Maltese, Nederlands,
- Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Tigrigna,
- Turkish and Vietnamese text as bit-mapped PostScript. To see these
+ Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French,
+ German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Maltese,
+ Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Tigrinya,
+ Turkish, and Vietnamese text as bit-mapped PostScript. To see these
languages in X, you can use the xfonts-intl-* packages (among others).
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