Bug#774942: texlive-latex-extra: package description has too many blank lines and is too long
On 2015-01-09 21:56:56 +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi Vincent,
>
> what is "too long"? For what?
For "dpkg -s" output, and any other method that also provides the
description. These blank lines waste space, requiring more scrolling.
Moreover, with "dpkg -s", as the description comes at the end, this
long description "hides" the other information from "dpkg -s", unless
a pager is used, but I assume that the end user doesn't expect so much
output.
> > The texlive-latex-extra package description has too many blank lines,
> > making it too long:
>
> That is on purpose to help the translators.
> Translation units are paragraphs, thus to make work for translators
> easy we followed the suggestion of the translators in this way.
The package description is for the end user, not for the translators.
If there is a technical problem for the translators, then it should
be solved without annoying the end user.
> > It may also be better to just give the CTAN package names, without
> > their description, and even that may be too much: using the Debian
> > package description may not be the best way to search for a CTAN
> > package anyway.
>
> Why, what is the problem you are having with the long descriptions?
See above.
> I *myself* use apt-cache search quite often to find a CTAN package
> or a feature in this way.
IMHO, a better tool should be provided; "apt-cache search" does not
output the CTAN packages with their descriptions matching the request.
And if the user just wants the Debian package corresponding to some
CTAN package, there's apt-file for that.
Similarly, packages usually don't include the list of binaries
they provide (or without the description, like what coreutils
does). I expect the same thing concerning CTAN packages, unless
the list is short.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
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