Bug#1023143: RFS: xfce4-calculator-plugin/0.7.1-1 [ITP] -- calculator plugin for Xfce panel
On Tue, Nov 1, 2022 at 9:29 AM Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> wrote:
> You may feel that, but I disagree. Good descriptions, both long and
> short, are important. Imagine somone reading through a list of our
> thousands of packages (who maybe never have even _heard_ of XFCE) when
> writing descriptions. The description needs to tell them enough to
> decide whether or not they might want to install this thing.
Hmm, I can see how a user running `apt search ...` could get a wrong
impression after reading the long description if it's incomplete or
poorly written.
> I've been using XFCE daily for 20 years and I'm still asking for a
> more useful description because I _don't_ know what this package
> is/does. What you've said above is pretty good, and I've now actually
> tried it, so I came up with this:
>
> "An XFCE desktop panel plugin, which provides a 'paper mode' style calculator as a box in the panel."
Woah, that sounds good. Apart from the 'paper mode'. Sorry but I have
no idea what that's supposed to mean. Perhaps something like:
"This plugin places a resizable text entry box, where you can enter
mathematical operations to calculate, on the Xfce panel. Common
operators (+, -, *, /, ^) with usual precedence rules and a number of
functions, including but not limited to abs(x), sqrt(x), sin(x) and
cos(x) are supported. An adjustable number of recent operations are
saved in history and can be accessed in a drop-down list."
could also work? Do you think it describes the package and its
features reasonably well? In any case, thanks for the inspiration!
> The important distinction here is between something that launches a
> desktop calculator or something that provides a box in the panel that
> will do calculations. It sounds from what you have said that it is the
> latter (and I have just installed it to check that that is indeed the case).
> I was actually a lot more excited about it when I thought it was a
> quick way to keep something like galculator to hand.
Well, it'd just be a launcher in that case and users can already add
launchers to their panels. However, I can see how users unfamiliar
with Xfce might get confused.
> That'll be the best way to work out what was intended.
Done. Let's wait for their answer. I'll update the package accordingly.
Thanks.
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