On Sat, Jan 24, 1998 at 11:52:08PM -0000, Jason Gunthorpe wrote: > I am trying to get the description display to show the description text > neatly. This involves reformatting the whole text into paragraphs and then > wrapping to the width of the box using a proportional font. Same as dselect as I can see. > The trouble is that there are some really weird package entries that I > can't do anything with, take ssh for instance: > > Ssh (Secure Shell) is a program to log into another computer over a > network, to execute commands in a remote machine, and to move files > from one machine to another. It provides strong authentication and > secure communications over insecure channels. It is intended as a > replacement for rlogin, rsh, rcp, and rdist. > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > This software may be freely imported into the United States; however, > the United States Government may consider re-exporting it a criminal > offense. Thus, if you are outside the US, please retrieve this > software from outside the US. > Futhermore, in the US, you might be in conflict with the RSA patent. > In some countries, particularly Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, and France, it > may be illegal to use any encryption at all without a special permit. I seem to remember that it was policy that the text may be splitted into paragraphs by placing a single dot `.' in one line. Unfortunately I can't find it in the policy and in the developer's reference. Christian: Could you add this to the policy or start a new thread on debian-policy: Description field: . The description should be written so that it tells the user what they need to know to decide whether to install the package. . This description should not just be copied from the blurb for the program. . Instructions for configuring or using the package should not be included--that is what installation scripts, manual pages, Info files, etc. are for. Copyright statements and other administrivia should not be included--that is what the copyright file is for. . You may divide the description into paragraphs that will displayed nicely within the "packages frontends" (such as dselect an deity). Paragraphs are delimited by a single dot `.' in the line between them. . To make the text more readable you might use two spaces after a full stop - you don't need to as the "packages frontends" will re-format the text and handle this. . You may - on the other hand - not insert additional spaces between normal words. . If you want to include a list of features, programs etc in the description, prepend each item with a singe dash `-'. The "packages frontends" will notice this automatically and re-format them correctly. [The first three statements are already covered in the policy] The last but one statement came from iwj asking me to change a description field that was mistakenly formatted as a block (raggedright+raggedleft). The last statement is a proposa by me. > I don't see much way to advoid formatting the text, I already tried > without and it just looks awefull. The only way to advoid it is to use a > 80col fixed width display someplace to view the text. It should be reformatted, just because you might run deity with ~50 columns while I may run it with 132 columns big. > So, should we try to convince the debian-policy people that we need some > sort of policy for package description texts? Yes. Regards, Joey -- / Martin Schulze * joey@infodrom.north.de * 26129 Oldenburg / / The MS-DOS filesystem is nice for removable media / / -- H. Peter Anvin /
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