RFC: fix summary text for lots of packages

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> I have a terrible headache and I'm on vacation in Hungary  for the
> first time and I go to the store looking for a society approved mind
> altering chemical substance to relieve my distress.  I walk into the
> store see a clerk and what do I ask them? Do I ask them details or do
> I ask them "where is the headache medicine."
> 
> Once I get to the Aisle where the first-aid stuff collectively sits I
> see 14 different brands of medicine, none of which I've heard of
> before because I'm in a foreign territory. I might see a brandname I
> know, but I've never before associated that brand with headache pills.
> "Uncle Ben's" branded extra strength gel-caps really doesn't call to
> me. So which one do I pick? Do I really care? Are they all just
> equally usable variants of "headache medicine" to me?  If I do care,
> like I have a specific allergic reaction that I need to avoid... I'd
> have to pick up the bottle and try to read the details...in
> Hungarian...which will ultimately result in my death because I will
> make the wrong choice unless I happen to have a translator who can
> help me read the fine print.
> 
> PackageKit is the store
> the Package groups are the Aisle
> The package name is the brand of headache medince
> The package description is the fine print on the bottle
> 
> What's the summary?

I think this is actually a great analogy.  And to me the summary is the
little advertising gimicks seen on and alongside the other things on the
bottle.

Things like: "New!",  "Larger size",  [Picture of grapes and smiling
child], etc.

They're differentiators that "help" you choose one product over another.

In our summaries, we want the advertising gimick to actually be
informative and factual so we'd automatically reject some of these as
not helpful.  But others are incredibly useful.  For instance, if I open
up PackageKit and go to the Sound and Video group, is it helpful to see:

[Sound and Video]
MPlayer -- *Media Player*
SongBird -- *Media Player*
Totem -- *Media Player*
Xine -- *Media Player*

No....  The summary needs to show differentiators that help the user
choose which one to take a look at the fine print on.  Depending on the
type of package we're looking at some of these should have different
information than others.

MPlayer -- *Feature rich media player*
SongBird -- *Media Player from the Mozilla Foundation*
Totem -- *Gstreamer based media player*
Xine -- *Customizable media player*

What's the claim to fame of each of these media players?  That piece of
identity should go in the summary.

Libraries should also make clear what programming language they're
useful for in addition to their claim to fame.  This can be done in
their name, though:

bouncycastle -- java cryptography library
m2crypto -- python library for calling OpenSSL
nss -- FIPSX.Y certified cryptography library
OpenSSL -- certificate management and cryptography library
perl-Crypt-SSLeay -- LWP https support library for OpenSSL
python-crypto -- cryptography library

There's likely other ways to make up differentiators that should be
added here as well.  That's why I requested examples with reasoning.

-Toshio

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