Message-Id: &lt;m0ucu7x-0002ctC@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk&gt;
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 96 14:43 BST
Sender: ijackson@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
From: iwj-descriptionreporter@master.debian.org (Ian Jackson)
To: maintonly@bugs.debian.org
Subject: less description: ext extra spaces

Package: less
Version: 290-8

An automatic check of the Description control file fields of all the
packages in the current Debian i386 distribution has found that this
package has some problems:
 Extended description contains spurious mid-line spaces

These are explained in greater detail below.

For details of how to write a Description field, please refer to the
packaging guidelines installed as an Info document with recent
versions of the dpkg program.  Select `guidelines' from the main
Info menu, and then `Appendix' from there.  The second item,
`How to write the Description control file field', is what you
want.

If you believe my script has a bug so that it has misinterpreted your
package's Description and that the comment above therefore doesn't
apply to your package, please let me know.  If you think the language
in the guidelines doesn't clearly enough forbid what you did, please
let me know about that too.

I have reported this to maintonly@bugs.debian.org.  In order to close
the report you should it Reply and edit the To field so that it
contains NNNN-done@bugs.debian.org and my special
iwj-descriptionreporter address.  There is no need to CC debian-devel,
as they will not have received a copy of this report.

Here are the explanations for the faults the script has found:

* Extended description contains spurious mid-line spaces:
 This message is triggered by multiple spaces in the middle of
 `unindented' extended description lines.  (Double spaces are ignored
 after full stops, ? and !, as this is usually just good typography.)
 
 Often this is caused by something like:
  Description: Archive file manipulation program.
   Afio manipulates groups of  files,   copying them within  or   between
   filesystems  and an afio archive.  Afio archives are portable, as they
   contain   only  ASCII-formatted  header information.
  ...
 This will not work correctly, because dselect will try to word-wrap
 this to fit the actual size of the screen.  Descriptions should be
 formatted with a ragged right margin.  If it were appropriate to
 right-fill the text then that would be dselect's job.
 
 If you think this problem has been reported by mistake, please look again
 very carefully.  Even a single extra space somewhere will generate it,
 and may not stand out when the description is viewed by eye.  I have
 hand-checked every package which triggered this error and in each case
 the message was correct and appropriate.

The summary description I saw was:
 A file pager program, similar to more(1)
The extended description was:
 Less  is  a  program similar to more (1), but which allows
 backward movement in the file as well as forward movement.
 Also, less does  not  have to read the entire input file
 before starting, so with large input files  it  starts  up
 faster  than  text editors like vi (1).  Less uses termcap
 (or terminfo on some systems), so it can run on a  variety
 of  terminals.  There is even limited support for hardcopy
 terminals.

Thank you for your time,
Ian Jackson.