Bug#701660: lintian: Possible wrong syntax-error-in-dep5-copyright test in Lintian (Duplicate field copyright)

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

user debian-policy@packages.debian.org
usertags 701660 informative discussion
thanks

Le Sun, Mar 03, 2013 at 02:30:47PM +0100, Niels Thykier a écrit :
> 
> The casual reader may misread this as:
> 
> """
> Copyright: 2008 John Smith
> Copyright: 2009, 2010 Angela Watts
> """
> 
> I.e. as two single-line fields that are both named "Copyright".  I think
> it would be prudent to rewrite this to something like:
> 
> """
> The Copyright field for that paragraph could look like:
> 
> Copyright:
>   Copyright 2008 John Smith
>   Copyright 2009, 2010 Angela Watts
> """

Dear Niels,

thank you for your report.

I think that one reason for not showing the field entierly is that there is
more than one way to to use the Copyright field, and that the example is
intended to be neutral.

In particular, this field has no synopsis, which means that the first line
starts directly after the colon.  Therefore, the contents of the field in the
example you propose start with an empty line.  I am not sure that I would like
to promote this in an example.

What are other people's thoughts on that matter ?

Have a nice week-end,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan