Source: glob2
Version: 0.9.4.4-2.3
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
The package descriptions for glob2 and glob2-data have a number of
fairly trivial English language problems and other issues.
> Package: glob2
[...]
> Description: innovative state-of-the-art Real Time Strategy (RTS) game
Two "severity: pedantic" issues.
* Calling something "state-of-the-art" is a bad idea unless you're
prepared to guarantee that you'll review the description every few
years to check that other similar games aren't doing something more
advanced. Globulation2 is ten years old now. Does it have, for
instance, adjustable camera angles as good as the ones in modern
RTS games? If not you really ought to leave out the claim that
it's state-of-the-art.
* Yes, it's a good idea to use the expanded form "Real Time Strategy"
the first time you use the expression, but you don't need to waste
space in the synopsis by then going on to explain the abbreviation.
Especially when you never use that abbreviation again in the
extended description!
> Globulation 2, in a whole, is an on-going project to create an innovative
> high
^^^^^^^^^^ ^ ^^
^
"In a whole" is not an idiomatic expression in English. What I would
guess it's trying to say is "on the whole", meaning "to summarise";
but it's a waste of space to say that in the first place.
"On-going" isn't usually given a hyphen. Given that there's been no
sign of any upstream releases this decade it's getting perilously
close to false advertising, but I suppose since it also hints at "beta
quality" it might as well stay. And in fact there's one selling point
that this blurb misses: it could add a mention of "multi-platform".
"To create an innovative high quality gameplay" should either lose the
indefinite article ("to create gameplay") or change to a count noun
("to create a game"). Either way, it's an opportunity to insert the
abbreviation "RTS".
"High quality" is a compound pre-nominal modifier, so it ought to have
a hyphen.
> quality gameplay by minimizing micro-management and assigning automatically
Ungrammatical adverb placement; it should be either "and automatically
assigning..." or (better) "and assigning the tasks to the units
automatically".
> the tasks to the units. The player just has to order the number of units
> he wants for a selected task and the units will do their best to satisfy
^^
> his requirements.
^^^
The main reason I'm picking on this package description rather than
all the other not-fantastically-good-English package descriptions out
there is that "the user" is not necessarily male. You could make
it "he or she" throughout, or use "they" (maybe with plural
"players"), but since the following paragraph goes on to talk about
"your" LAN it might as well be consistent and use second person here,
too.
> .
> Glob2 can be played by a single player, through your Local Area Network
> (LAN),
^^^^^
Again, while it's helpful to avoid using unexplained abbreviations, if
you're not going to refer to LANs again later there's no point
introducing the acronym here. The same applies to YOG in the next
line, except that there the expansion doesn't even seem to be
accurate! The glob2 wiki and the in-game messages say it's "Ysagoon
Online Gaming".
> or through Internet, thanks to Ysagoon Online Game (YOG), a meta-server. It
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^
Idiomatically "over the Internet", and it would also read more
smoothly as "thanks to the Ysagoon Online Gaming meta-server".
(Can we guarantee that YOG even still exists?)
> also features a scripting language for versatile gameplay and an integrated
> map editor.
>
> Package: glob2-data
[...]
> Description: dataset for Globulation2 (glob2)
While I'm editing this I'll switch it to the alternative approach of
using a version of the main package's synopsis (now that it has been
shortened):
Description: innovative Real Time Strategy game - data files
> Globulation 2, in a whole, is an on-going project to create an innovative
> high
> quality gameplay by minimizing micro-management and assigning automatically
> the tasks to the units. The player just has to order the number of units
> he wants for a selected task and the units will do their best to satisfy
> his requirements.
(As above)
> .
> These are the images, maps and the rest of architecture-independent dataset
> for Globulation 2.
Make that "this package provides the images, maps, and other
architecture-independent data files..."
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
diff -ru glob2-0.9.4.4.pristine/debian/control glob2-0.9.4.4/debian/control
--- glob2-0.9.4.4.pristine/debian/control 2015-05-17 18:09:43.000000000 +0100
+++ glob2-0.9.4.4/debian/control 2015-05-18 11:10:26.473012918 +0100
@@ -10,27 +10,27 @@
Architecture: any
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, glob2-data (= ${source:Version})
Replaces: glob2-data (<< 0.9.2)
-Description: innovative state-of-the-art Real Time Strategy (RTS) game
- Globulation 2, in a whole, is an on-going project to create an innovative high
- quality gameplay by minimizing micro-management and assigning automatically
- the tasks to the units. The player just has to order the number of units
- he wants for a selected task and the units will do their best to satisfy
- his requirements.
+Description: innovative Real Time Strategy game
+ Globulation 2 is an ongoing, multi-platform project to create innovative
+ high-quality RTS gameplay, minimizing micro-management and assigning tasks
+ to the units automatically. You just have to order the number of units you
+ want for a selected task and the units will do their best to satisfy your
+ requirements.
.
- Glob2 can be played by a single player, through your Local Area Network (LAN),
- or through Internet, thanks to Ysagoon Online Game (YOG), a meta-server. It
- also features a scripting language for versatile gameplay and an integrated
+ Glob2 can be played by a single player, through your Local Area Network,
+ or over the Internet, thanks to the Ysagoon Online Gaming meta-server. It
+ also features a scripting language for versatile gameplay and an integrated
map editor.
Package: glob2-data
Architecture: all
Depends: ${misc:Depends}
-Description: dataset for Globulation2 (glob2)
- Globulation 2, in a whole, is an on-going project to create an innovative high
- quality gameplay by minimizing micro-management and assigning automatically
- the tasks to the units. The player just has to order the number of units
- he wants for a selected task and the units will do their best to satisfy
- his requirements.
+Description: innovative Real Time Strategy game - data files
+ Globulation 2 is an ongoing, multi-platform project to create innovative
+ high-quality RTS gameplay, minimizing micro-management and assigning tasks
+ to the units automatically. You just have to order the number of units you
+ want for a selected task and the units will do their best to satisfy your
+ requirements.
.
- These are the images, maps and the rest of architecture-independent dataset
- for Globulation 2.
+ This package provides the images, maps, and other architecture-independent
+ data files for Globulation 2.
