On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 09:39:32PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:
3) License text will contain leading spaces.In debian/control's Description field, the field value keeps the leading space of the line, but the description is later wrapped again unless an extra space signals a verbatim section.In DEP-5's License fields, the text formatting would be lost if we word-wrapped the field value. Therefore, if strictly following the Debian control file format, license texts will contain an extra space, which is not a problem but is not elegant.I can't imagine how this could possibly matter to anyone. I routinely add or remove extra indentation for licenses when I move them from file to file even without DEP-5. But DEP-5 can certainly say that the leading spaces are not part of the field value.
Maybe an improvement could be to clarify that "verbatim" do not mean as-is, only word-for-word. I.e. that it is not a technical requirement to preserve formatting, only a stylistic bonus. I have (as a non-native english speaker) been concerned about this in the past, and thus wondered if a) adding a leading space and b) rewrapping very short or very long lines actually violated the requirement of Debian Policy for a "verbatim" copy.
Regards, - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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