Re: Synchronizing descriptions with GSRC?

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hi Brandon,

Brandon Invergo <brandon@invergo.net> skribis:

> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
>> After a quick glance over the differences, it’s not clear to me what
>> should be done.  Often, descriptions in GSRC are shorter that what we
>> have.  Sometimes they’re the same, or stripped version of those we have.
>> Sometimes they paraphrase those we have.
>>
>> Descriptions in Guix are typically taken from the upstream web page or
>> README file, so I would intuitively feel like the upstream description
>> better characterizes the package.
>
> Just a quick response to this.  When I was writing the descriptions for
> GSRC, I wasn't sure whether I could copy descriptions wholesale from the
> project websites due to copyright claims.  I doubt that anyone would get
> upset but I was just playing it safe.  For example, they take a similar
> precaution with the free software directory on fsf.org.  So, that's the
> reason most of them are paraphrased.

Yes, but it’s unclear whether these are copyrightable, and since these
are GNU packages anyway, it’s safe to directly copy their descriptions,
I think.

> Anyway, I'm happy to sync in the other direction and pull some
> descriptions from Guix into GSRC. 
>
> Perhaps it would be best to keep all canonical package descriptions,
> short and long, in a single file under revision control somewhere, such
> as in womb.  They would then be available for anyone who needs them,
> should any need arise in the future and it would be easier for all
> involved to stay in sync.  What do you think?

Sounds good to me.

A related question is i18n: Guix uses gettext, and the plan is to use
the Translation Project for the translation of synopses/descriptions
too.  Should that be handled externally too?  If it is, we’d still need
to have a gettext catalog for our purposes.  How could that work?

Thanks,
Ludo’.