[Fedora-packaging] Re: Long and "advertising" descriptions

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 14.09.2008 15:35, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-09-14 at 10:36 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>> Yes, I know, enlightenment is designed for small machines and quite
>> fast 
>> on them. But those things I quoted and other sections in the
>> description 
>> sound more like advertising than a proper description. Up to a
>> specific 
>> point that's okay IMHO, but here the packager IMHO shoot way over the
>> top.
> Wow. That is indeed too much information. :) I'm not sure how we should
> "guideline" that, other than something like:
> 
> == Descriptions ==
> Your package description should contain useful data about the package,
> and answer the question "what is this and what does it do?". In general,
> the description should not exceed 10 lines or so. Try not to put too
> much here, this isn't an epic novel, it's just a package description.
> Also, there is no real need to "advertise" the package here, so
> statements like "this is the best perl module that has ever been created
> by humans", while possibly accurate, are not terribly useful in
> answering the question "what is this and what does it do?".

Sounds good. Not sure, but maybe it's possible to write it a bit shorter 
to work against the "guidelines grow and grow" trend (¹). Maybe 
something like this is enough:

"""
The description should not be exceed round about ten lines of text and 
contain useful data about what the packaged software does. The 
description should be written from a distance point of view and not 
sound like advertising.
"""

I suppose a native English speaker is able to write it more clear in 
less words.

CU
knurd

(¹) -- heck, maybe this should not be in the guidelines at all; maybe a 
new "best practices" document might be a better place for this and 
similar things, as "description not to long, no advertising style" is 
obvious to round about 99 percent of our packagers...