On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 05:30:39PM -0500, Colin Walters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was heard to say: > On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 14:01, David B Harris wrote: > > > I do have some differences of opinion, though. It's sad, but there are a > > getting to be a fairly large number of DDs who are "attention grabbers". > > Just a few days ago, I saw a package description that said something > > along the lines of "this is the best package for this purpose" ... and > > it certainly wasn't. Even if it was, I think everybody would agree that > > that kind of language doesn't belong in a Debian package description. > > I would tend to agree; however, I don't think that more people will say > stuff like "this is the best package" even if we treat descriptions as a > form of advertising, simply because saying "this is the best" isn't an > effective advertisement. I think it doesn't have a strong effect on > people, because it doesn't say very much. At least, advertisements I > see around me don't use that kind of language. Then again though, I'm > not a marketing department :)
That might be true, but I would like to see language such as "best package for foo" explicitly deprecated in the guide. I've even written such stuff myself, back before I realized what the problems were. (hopefully there isn't anything like that left in my packages :) ) > > Also, in the description template, two spaces are used after a period - > > is that standard nowadays? > > I think this is an unresolved issue. I've added a section on this to > the description writing guide. On an unrelated topic, it would be nice if the description format allowed whitespace to be collapsed/expanded on wordwrapped lines. The last time I checked, it seemed to at least imply that whitespace was sancrosact, and I found several packages that relied on this in their description. (sorry, I don't remember which) Daniel -- /-------------------- Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------\ | Genius may have its limitations, | | but stupidity is not thus handicapped. | \------- (if (not (understand-this)) (go-to http://www.schemers.org)) --------/