Re: Bug#593909: debian-policy: Clarifications about the syntax of Debian control files.

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 10:24:57AM -0700, Russ Allbery a écrit :
> Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > Non-wrappable field values
> > --------------------------
> 
> > §5.1 contains the following paragraph:
> 
> >   In fields where it is specified that lines may not wrap, only a single
> >   line of data is allowed and whitespace is not significant in a field
> >   body. Whitespace must not appear inside names (of packages,
> >   architectures, files or anything else) or version numbers, or between
> >   the characters of multi-character version relationships.
> 
> What this paragraph means by "wrap" is "may span multiple lines," and it's
> also really not correct about whitespace.  I think what this paragraph
> should say is something like:
> 
>     In fields where the value may not span multiple lines, the amount of
>     whitespace in the field body is not significant.  Any amount of
>     whitespace is equivalent to a single space.  Whitespace must not
>     appear inside names (of packages, architectures, files, or anything
>     else) or version numbers, or between the characters of multi-character
>     versoin relationships.

I still have difficulties to understand the meaning of this paragraph, and to
what fields it applies. Is it just specifiying that the parser, in the case of
fields that allow continuation lines, can be either intructed to replace all
white spaces and newlines by single spaces, or to leave the value as it is,
including the new lines? In that case I would propose the following wording.

	  The field's description may speficy whether continuation lines
	  are allowed or not. When continuation lines are allowed, the field's
	  value contains the newlines characters of the continuation lines.
	  It can be specified for a field that white spaces including the newlines
	  are not significant and replaced by single spaces. In that case,
	  whitespace must not appear inside names (of packages, architectures,
	  files, or anything else) or version numbers, or between the characters
	  of multi-character version relationships.

I have one more question: are continuation lines disallowed unless specified
otherwise?

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan