Re: Improving imagemagick.bug-presubj

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Bastien,

Bastien ROUCARIES wrote:

> Could you help me and improve this bug-presubj message?

Gladly, thanks.

My first impression is that it gives _too much_ advice in multiple
directions --- a bug reporter is typically looking for quick,
straightforward instructions that will let them move on with life or
lead to a fix.  So:

[...]
> When reporting imagemagick errors, please provide the actual
> input files (images) and options given to the tool
> (convert, mogrify, identify) at run time.
>
> This can mean the difference between a pleasant debugging experience
> and a heisenbug that becomes unreproducible.

I'd remove the above two paragraphs.  They are common sense and
redundant next to item 6 below.

> Please notices, that imagemagick depends for converting some file
> format on various package. These formats includes
> svg, dots (graphviz), tiff, png, jpeg, wmf.

I'd remove the above paragraph or replace it with a new item in the
itemized list below.

> Debugging imagemagick could be difficult and it is really helpful to
> follow the following steps:

Nice.  s/could/can/; s/it is really helpful to follow/you can help
by following/.

> 1. verify that you have installed imagemagick and not graphickmagick-compat:
>    - run under a terminal: convert 2>&1 | grep -i GraphicsMagick
>    - if you see graphicmagick on the output,
>    please reportbug to graphickmagick

s/under a terminal/in a terminal/
s/graphicmagick/graphicsmagick/
s/graphickmagick/graphicsmagick/

The indentation in the line about the graphicsmagick is strange --- it
would be easier to read formatted like this:

  - if you see graphicsmagick in the output, please report against
    the graphicsmagick package.

Aside from that, sounds good.

> 2. install the imagemagick-dbg,libjpeg8-dbg,libwmf-bin,librsvg2-dbg,librsvg2-bin
> and
>    inkscape  package.

This list is likely to go out of date quickly.  Is there some page
in the Debian wiki about how to find -dbg packages corresponding to
a particular executable?

> 3. Instead of running convert, mogrify, display or identify run
>    convert.im6, mogrify.im6, display.im6 or identify.im6 directly.

Good idea.  Missing comma before "run".

> 4. if imagemagick coredump, could you please send a backtrace. See
>    http://wiki.debian.org/HowToGetABacktrace to get it.

s/coredump/dumps core/
s/could you please send/please attach/

> 5. if the input format is svg, run the following program:
>    - rsvg-convert yourinput.svg > outrsvg.png
>    - inkscape yourinput.svg --export-png=outputinkscape.png
>    - join to your bug report outrsvg.png and outputinkscape.png

s/join/attach/

> 6. Document the exact command line used, and join the input files.

s/join/attach/

Thanks again for writing this.

Sincerely,
Jonathan