I'm trying to incorporate into my project the metadata.xml files used in
portage, but I have a few questions:
1. It seems like many of the package metadata.xml files \-escape
"special" characters a la bash. This isn't really necessary in
XML and if there are special characters, such as '<', etc. then
there is an XML way of presenting them. Is there a special
reason that the '\' is used (i.e does software exist that
requires this)?
2. Are metadata.xml files a requirement for categories? There are
a few categories that do not have one:
* x11-proto
* x11-apps
* x11-drivers
3. If a metadata.xml has a <longdescription> element, is it
required to contain text? There is at least one package that
has an empty <longdescription>. I wanted to use the
<longdescription> to override the DESCRIPTION in the .ebuild, if
it exists, but in this case the DESCRIPTION is actually
infinitely longer than the <longdescription>.
4. Speaking of <longdescription>, are line breaks to be preserved
in their representation? There are a few packages whose
<longdescription> use line breaks for formatting. One in
particular, gnustep-libs/steptalk not only prefers to preserve
line breaks, but also appears to prefer a fixed-width font in
it's representation. Is this also a requirement?
If anyone has answers to any of the above questions I thank you in
advance for your response.
-m
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