Bug#212814: please clarify 3.4: description of a package

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 11:02:17PM +0300, Richard Braakman wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 10:50:41AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > I believe package management utilities are allowed to omit the short
> > description in favor of the long one for interface considerations.
> 
> Why, though?  What good does it do?  The long description is already
> long (hence the name), so using one more line to add the short
> description won't hurt anything.  And writing good descriptions
> is a lot easier if you can assume the long description will be
> read in the context provided by the package name and the short
> description.

Just because it can be redondant or ugly. In fact, either
we insist that long description are meant to be always be displayed with
the short or never:

Description: Documentation for an array processing package for Python
 This package contains the manual in PDF format.

Without the short description, the long description say nothing

Description: Emacs-lisp python-mode for the scripting language Python (v2.2)
 Emacs-lisp python-mode for the scripting language Python (v2.2).

 If you install this with XEmacs 20 or 21, it will replace the included
 python-mode.el, which may or may not be a more recent version (use "C-h v
 py-version" to compare).

The short description is just redondant.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.