Debian bug report logs - #1502
Uniform lists in debian.control

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From: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
To: debian-bugs@pixar.com
Subject: Re: Bug#1502: Uniform lists in debian.control

Erick Branderhorst writes ("Bug#1502: Uniform lists in debian.control"):
> Package: ltxtool ltxgraph term    ical  mtools   wu-ftpd
> 
> All the above listed packages have a list of items in their description
> in debian.control. In order to improve dselect and how it is presented
> to the user it would be better to use a uniform way of listing these.

This is a good idea.  However ...

> A list like this (MODERATE?):
> - Item 1
> - Item 2

... whatever way we do it it is very important (a) that all lines of
all descriptions are indented by one space, so that they don't look
like new header fields (dpkg-deb will catch this mistake) and (b) that
any lists like that that need to be formatted as-is rather than
linewrapped be indented by at least one extra space.  Ie, something
like:

Package: ltxgraph
description: Color and graphics in LaTeX
 This is a pre-release of LaTeX packages for:
  * producing color
  * including graphics (eg PostScript) files
  * rotation and scaling of text
 in LaTeX documents.

(this is an actual example from the current distribution).

Ian.

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From: Erick Branderhorst <branderhorst@fgg.eur.nl>
Subject: Uniform lists in debian.control
To: debian-bugs@pixar.com
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 95 13:35:53 MET
Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85]

Package: ltxtool ltxgraph term    ical  mtools   wu-ftpd
Version: 1.0-3   0.7b-1   2.3.5-5 1.9-1 2.0.7-12 2.4-13
Libc: libc.so.4.6.27
Kernel etc: Linux eb 1.2.10 #1 Tue Jun 13 18:37:28 EST 1995 i486
Reporter: repair 0.1
Subject: Formatting description in debian.control

All the above listed packages have a list of items in their description
in debian.control. In order to improve dselect and how it is presented
to the user it would be better to use a uniform way of listing these.

A list like this (MODERATE?):
- Item 1
- Item 2

Or a list like this (BEST?):
* Item 1
* Item 2

Or something like this (BEST?):
* First tool:  Short one line description of the first tool.
* Second tool: Short one line description of the second tool.
* Third tool:  Short one line description of the third tool.

Or a little more confusing list like this (WORSE?):
o Item 1.
o Item 2.

Whatever you think is the best, but let's agree on one way of doing
this.

Erick