RFC: Description text in packages

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Lun 15 décembre 2008 16:37, Richard Hughes a écrit :

> Next on my list are insane descriptions.

Specs files and most notably human-targeted text inside them are
UTF-8. Please do not invent any broken application-side transcoding
system. Writing correctly encoded text is the packager and translator
responsability.

If the fugly ASCII-zation some packagers use offends you,
1. write a best practices wiki page with recommended UTF-8 sequences
2. get it reviewed/approved by FPC and FESCO
3. open bugs for offending packages
4. get some broken-ASCII checks added to our package linting/review
tools.

This is how our guidelines process works, it's long and bureaucratic
but it ensures everyone has its say and no gratuituous bikesheding is
pushed on packagers.

> Question 2: What's the maximum permitted length of a description?

What matters is not the description length but its quality and
usefulness to users. Some domains use long descriptions, because the
target audience expects them.

Note that that because rpmlint insists on forcing 79 character
line-wraps to help dumb terminal users, it's effectively impossible
right now to get correct paragraph flow and breaks in descriptions
(aye for optimizing the minority case at the expense of everyone
else).

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot