> administrative suggestions

Looks good.  Applying.

> what to use for the package description.

New first paragraph of my package comments looks okay for this?

;; DSL IDE builds presentations on top of org mode documents.  It integrates
;; with arbitrary buffers and org babel, making anything Emacs can do easy to
;; incorporate into a presentation.  Headers are configured with extensible
;; actions.  Custom steps can be scripted with babel blocks or made into
;; reusable custom actions.  DSL IDE achieves a good result with no preparation
;; but can achieve anything Emacs can display if you need it to.

> Also, you mention an Info manual, but I didn't find anything besides
> doc/README.org.  Is that supposed to be installed as the manual?

I didn't get around to that yet.  I intend to break up the readme and export a texinfo to /doc/dslide.texi.  IIRC this location is compatible with ELPA package archives.