Descriptions policy draft

This is a proposal for the descriptions of the KDE packages in Debian. I tried to contact upstream in kde-devel for a bit of help in this issue, but (maybe because of the holidays) I didn't received many feedback. My suggestion is to agree on some common brief guidelines, and make a list of packages that lack a description, as Jess Roncero suggested. We can post the list in the KDE or Debian Wiki, and then ask in kde-quality or debian-kde, so users can help with them.

The problem

The descriptions actually are more or less like that (taken from kaudiocreator, in kdemultimedia):

	Description: CD ripper and audio encoder frontend
	KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment
	for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary
	functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the
	technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
	.
	CD ripper and audio encoder frontend.
	.
	This package is part of the official KDE multimedia module.

This haves two problems:

We should solve the second as mentioned above, trying to get the descriptions from users or upstream developers. For the first, we can use this proposed solution.

The solution

Proposed description for kaudiocreator:

	Description: CD ripper and audio encoder frontend for KDE
	KAudioCreator is a tool for audio extraction (ripping) and encoding. It can
	keep your WAV files, or convert them to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, or FLAC. It also
	searches CDDB to retrieve the information of the disk.
	.
	 This package is part of the KDE 4 multimedia module.
	See the 'kde' and 'kdemultimedia' packages for more information.

Of course, having a better description of the application, is not part of the policy, is just common sense. ;-) What is important to highlight, is that the KDE is a powerful... blurb, and the this package is part of... final, are merged and simplified at the end. It's more logical to have the description first, because those using KDE already know what it is, and those who don't use it, don't care about it, and are just interested in the application. Summarizing:

  1. Description of the application. Always open to improvements and corrections.
  2. This package is part of KDE, as a component of the KDE foo module. See the 'kde' and 'kdefoo' packages for more information.
  3. Homepage: http://foo.kde.org/. This probably doesn't make sense for some modules (like this, multimedia), but the websites of KDE-Edu, KDE-Accesibility, KDE-PIM, and maybe others, are interesting, and can be promoted.

Metapackages

The individual descriptions, rely a bit on the metapackages to describe the context, so we can move the KDE is... blurb to them. This is a proposed description for the packages in meta-kde:

kde
	Description: The KDE Software Compilation official modules
	KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment
	for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary
	functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the
	technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
	.
	This package includes all the official modules released with KDE. This
	includes multimedia, networking, personal information manager (PIM),
	graphics, education, games, web development, and other artwork and
	utilities.

Notes: instead of saying "kdeadmin, kdeartwork, ..." (which is the same as looking at the Depends), I prefer to say a really descriptive word.

kde-core
	Description: The KDE Software Compilation core modules
	KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment
	for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary
	functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the
	technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
	.
	This package includes all the core official modules released with KDE. This
	includes just the basic desktop (browser, file manager, text editor, control
	center, panel, etc.) and important libraries and data.