On Mon, 2003-10-13 at 01:47, David B Harris wrote: > > If you think 35 characters is too long, feel free to start filing > > thousands and thousands of bugs on all the other packages, suggesting > > that they remove little bits and pieces. > > (And if you don't, please don't bother people about it - instead file a > bug on Policy asking for the short description guidelines to > specifically say "do not mention the application's toolkit".)
I will feel free to comment on ITPs where I feel it's necessary. I haven't got the time to look through every single package's description, though I tend to comment on the description of packages I install where I feel it's necessary. Dependencies tell you whether a given package runs in a given environment. The average user does not give a shit whether the program they are running uses Qt or GTK. (Does your Aunt Tillie reject a Windows program because it uses the Borland win32 toolkit?) The description should talk about the capabilities of a package, not its implementation details. Take these sentences as a set and derive the conclusion, "the description should not mention toolkits." (At least, for applications. It's hard for a toolkit to not mention the toolkit.) A compromise: The fact that the average Debian user might want to know (in a commonly searchable way) whether a program uses a given toolkit is reason enough to place it in the long description, along the lines of "foo is a GNOME application which frobs data especially for Tillie. [etc]" -- Joe Drew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> My weblog doesn't detail my personal life: http://me.woot.net
