Re: [gentoo-dev] About DESCRIPTION in ebuilds needing to end with a dot "."

[Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se>]

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Pacho Ramos wrote:
> > So, rephrasing the example Alexandre pasted, consider:
> > 
> > x11-libs/qt-core - The Qt toolkit is a comprehensive C++ application
> >                    development framework.
> > 
> > vs.
> > 
> > x11-libs/qt-core - A comprehensive C++ application development framework
> > 
> > Which one is better, in your opinion?
> 
> Well, I my case I would prefer second

I agree, I also like the second example.


> sentence...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_(linguistics)#Major_and_minor_sentences

Suggests that even a phrase such as the second example above can be
called a (minor) sentence.


> but it would still end with a dot.

I think that looks ugly and is redundant.

Especially if we were to require that all DESCRIPTION phrases must
always be presented with a full stop, I think it is a very bad idea
to enforce that they are written into the ebuilds. Especially if
there is a rule that they will always be terminated by a full stop
then that should and must be added by tools using the ebuild.

It makes absolutely no sense to have so frequent redundant data in
ebuilds, and it seems like full stop or no full stop is a matter of
presentation policy and should thus happen during presentation.


> But if it sounds rare for you, no problem.

ebuilds are markup and not formatting IMO, and the two shouldn't be
confused. If you want to work on presentation (which is important
too!) then go for it, but in any case I don't think a full stop at
end of descriptions is really worth the cost. All user interfaces are
shitty enough already, and users are unable to deal with information
already, so please don't add redundancy like full stops would be to
the problem.


//Peter

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