Re: [ELPA] Submitting new package Org-remark

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

[ BTW, your package didn't build yet because of:

    ======== Building tarball archive-devel/org-remark-0.2.0.0.20220129.95541.tar...
    Problem with copyright notices:
    Missing copyright notice in org-remark/demo/custom-pens.el
    Build error for archive-devel/org-remark-0.2.0.0.20220129.95541.tar: (error "Abort")
    ######## Build of package archive-devel/org-remark-0.2.0.0.20220129.95541.tar FAILED!! ]

> I would like to use an ASCII export of README.org, not the raw
> README.org file for the package description.

The current scripts generate an HTML version of `README.org` for the
webpage and an ASCII version for the `<pkg>-readme.txt` (used by
`list-packages`) from the :readme, so I think it should be better
overall, and it definitely should not use the raw Org text any more.

> Currently, `describe-package' shows the raw `README.org` *after* the
> package has been installed.

This should depend on when the package was built: the scripts were
changed a month or two ago and they only affect those packages that have
been rebuilt since.

> 1. Before the user installs a package, `describe-package` (and
>    `package-list-packages`) displays `package-name-readme.txt`.  ELPA
>    generates it and when `README.org` is used as the README file, it
>    gets exported to ASCII plain text (I believe this is done in
>    functions `elpaa--get-README' and `elpaa--section-to-plain-text' in
>    elpa-admin.el)

That's right.

> 2. After the user has installed a package, `describe-package` (and
>    `package-list-packages`) displays one of these files: "README-elpa"
>    "README-elpa.md" "README" "README.rst" "README.org".  When
>    `README.org` is used, the raw text is displayed without being
>    exported to ASCII format (I believe this is done in function
>    `describe-package-1' and `package--get-description')

Oh, my!  You're absolutely right.  I wasn't aware of this code in
`describe-packages`.  We should improve it to use the same approach as
in `elpaa--get-README` and `elpaa--section-to-plain-text` (tho maybe
using some other part of Org which renders directly in an Emacs buffer
rather than a txt file, so it looks better).

There's also the problem that `describe-package` doesn't have access to the
spec we put in `elpa-packages`, so it can only guess which README file
to use based on a heuristic.

Any chance you'd be interested in improving `describe-package`?


        Stefan