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Re: ITS: homebank



On Thu, 31 May 2007 22:45:01 +0200 (CEST)
"francesco namuri" <francesco@namuri.it> wrote:

> I am looking for a sponsor for my package "homebank".

OK a few comments:

1. The long description can be improved. The use of 'even more!' is not
ideal and some of the features (like import/export) could do with some
more detail. The "standard" application in this area is gnucash (I was
a gnucash developer at one time) and your long description should
follow that template and tell the user how homebank differs from the
"standard" app in the field. For one thing, you should make a big deal
about how quickly homebank starts up compared to gnucash (which
probably has a LOT to do with the vastly reduced number of
dependencies).

2. I think this package could do with a split to give a
homebank-common containing the images and translations. Some of the SVG
files are very large - I would be particularly interested if upstream
were willing to consider smaller graphics and less buttons on the
toolbars (think embedded).

3. Standards-Version: 3.7.2.2
That should just be:
Standards-Version: 3.7.2

4. The 3.3 version string seems a bit misleading - the ChangeLog
doesn't seem to contain records prior to 3.2. Not much you can do about
that but be prepared for users expecting a package with a much longer
history - users may expect it to be more stable than if it was version
0.3.3 (which is closer to how it looks to me).

5. Please ask upstream to make it clear in the app that Help|Contents
requires an internet connection - this action has the F1 shortcut key
which most users would expect to provide offline documentation, not
online - especially as the Help menu specifically includes an online
help menu item which takes you to a different site. This is just a case
of preempting bug reports. I would encourage you to encourage upstream
to provide offline documentation - HTML is fine - via doc-base and a
homebank-doc package.

6. the watch file is broken:
homebank-3.3$ uscan -dehs --no-download
<dehs>
<package>homebank</package>
<debian-uversion>3.3</debian-uversion>
<debian-mangled-uversion>3.3</debian-mangled-uversion>
<upstream-version>3.3_unstable</upstream-version>
<upstream-url>http://homebank.free.fr/public/homebank-3.3_unstable.tar.gz</upstream-url>
<status>Newer version available</status>

Use this watch file instead:
# Compulsory line, this is a version 3 file
version=3

http://homebank.free.fr/public/homebank-(.*)_[a-z]*\.tar\.gz

Overall, I like it and I think it deserves to be in Debian. It is fast,
easy to learn, good clean interface, it picks up localisation OK too.
It just needs some more work upstream on the toolbars (configurable
would be v.useful) and offline documentation. 

Tidy up the long description, correct the Standards-Version and I think
it is ready.

I'll be on [VAC] soon but unless there is a new upstream release during
June that should not be a problem. Contact me again for future
sponsoring of homebank.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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