Bug#108416: Format of short description should be mandated
On Sat, Aug 11, 2001 at 10:52:55PM +0200, Sebastian Rittau wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 11, 2001 at 04:35:42PM -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> > I also think that that short description should be as close as possible
> > to a real sentence.
> Agreed. Thatswhy I prefer the period. :)
I strongly disagree. Most packages have a noun clause as the first
line of the description, not a sentence, and thus, capitalization and
a period would be grammatically incorrect. This could, of course, be
changed by mandating that the first line _be_ a sentence, but it would
gain us nothing except redundancy and awkwardness in most cases.
Thus:
Package: foo-ed
Description: editor for foo files
vs.
Package: foo-ed
Description: Foo-ed is an editor for foo files.
The former is more concise, and every bit as clear. Plus, it avoids
the awkward situation here where you end up capitalizing the package
name, even though the package name on the file system (and in the
database) is lower-case.
Of course, there may be cases where it makes sense to use a full
sentence in the first line of the description. For this reason, IMO,
we should neither forbid nor mandate capitalization and periods.
--
Chris Waters | Pneumonoultra- osis is too long
xtifr@debian.org | microscopicsilico- to fit into a single
or xtifr@speakeasy.net | volcaniconi- standalone haiku
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