Bug#280675: ITP: l2tpns
On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 03:34:45PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> Jonathan McDowell <noodles@earth.li> schrieb:
> > On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 12:17:20PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> >> To my taste, this description contains too many abbreviations, and is
> >> only understandable for someone who already knows what they mean. Please
> >> follow the general guidelines for descriptions,
> > "The package description should be written for the average likely user"
> >
> > The average likely user should know what L2TP is and understand the
> > LNSes role in this.
> No, I don't think so. I think that "the average likely user" is meant
> to be an average user of Debian, not the user of the package. This is
> logical, because the purpose of the description is to allow a user to
> decide whether he *is* the target user of the package.
If the user doesn't understand the package description, is it not
reasonable to assume they'll work out it's probably not for them? If I
went searching for something and found a handful of packages, some of
which had many terms I didn't understand while the others did, I'd
assume that some of the packages weren't appropriate to what I wanted.
Must we dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator rather
than assuming our users have some level of intellegence?
> Did you read the complete paragraph? It explains its intention with an
> example:
>
> ,----
> | Avoid referring to other applications or frameworks that the user
> | might not be familiar with ? "GNOME" or "KDE" is fine, since users are
> | probably familiar with these terms, but "GTK+" is probably not. Try
> | not to assume any knowledge at all. If you must use technical terms,
> | introduce them.
> `----
>
> If GTK+ is not acceptable, how can l2tpd, l2tp and lns be? They could,
> if you _first_ state clearly that the package is only aimed at people
> experienced in some type of network setup. Any user who wants to do
> something about her dialup connection and enters "apt-cache search ppp"
> should immediately know whether the package might be useful (perhaps
> after some or a lot of reading) or whether it is about something
> different.
I would argue that the majority of people using GTK+ apps are going to
be wanting pointy clicky front ends and thus not necessarily know or
care what GTK+ is.
Would you be satisfied with "This package is not intended for users who
want to setup a local dialup or similar connection; you probably want
the ppp package instead." as the first paragraph of the description? Or
perhaps "This package is aimed at those who need to terminate a large
number of L2TP sessions; if you're a home user you probably want the ppp
package".
> > (And the only abbreviations I count in the description are L2TP [which
> > gets expanded], LNS, PPP and ISP.)
> That's about 3 to 4 too much. Generally, because of good style,
> not because they are unfamiliar to me.
I'm sorry, I disagree. PPP and ISP are commonly used terms and L2TP/LNS
should be familiar to the users of the package.
J.
--
Revd. Jonathan McDowell, ULC | Don't be a stranger.
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