Bug#695213: Typos in package description

[Eric Beuque]

I'm the upstream developer of FreetuxTV.


On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Justin B Rye <jbr at edlug.org.uk> wrote:

> Martin Eberhard Schauer wrote:
> > Dear Debian Multimedia Maintainers,
> >
> > I think that there are some typos and potential for improvements in the
> > package description (1). (CCed l10n-english as it is a new package).
> >
> > Current state:
> >
> >  Description: Internet television and radio player
> >   FreetuxTV is a video player based on LibVLC allowing you to watch and
> record
> >   TV on your PC. A large database (growing daily) of free
> WebTV/WebRadio/WebCam
> >   channels in more than 20 languages is accessible. You can also play
> streams
> >   from ISP television service if it provides this feature. Moreover, it
> is also
> >   possible to easily program your recording on each channel with
> differents
> >   transcoding formats.
> >   .
> >   The vlc package provides all multimedia codecs required by freetuxtv.
>
> Yes, that's got a few non-nativisms.
>


I'm not a native (and propably not a very good) English speakers. So I'm
not able to help you very much about the language rules to follow or not.
So I trust you.


>
> > I'm afraid the short description does not adhere to the Developer's
> reference,
> > section 6.2.2 (no need for capitalization). And a program does not allow
> > something.
>
> There's no need for *extra* capitalisation just because of its status
> as a short description, but "the Internet" is widely considered to be
> a proper noun and therefore intrinsically capitalised.  (To me this
> makes about as much sense as capitalising "the sky", but it seems to
> have become the standard rule.)
>
> > Please consider my proposal for a new description.
> >
> > Description: internet television and radio player
> >  FreetuxTV is a video player based on LibVLC enabling you to watch and
> record
>
> Maybe I'm showing my age, but to me "video player" means a device you
> slot VHS cassettes into.  Since you can apparently use this for radio
> shows too I would suggest "media player" (but I won't try to eliminate
> TV-centric terms in the rest of the description).
>
> Upstream seem to call it "libVLC" (when non-sentence-initial).
>
> I approve of stamping out useless uses of "allow", but I would suggest
> just simplifying down to
>
>    FreetuxTV is a media player (based on libvlc) for watching and recording
>    television on a PC.
>
> This phrasing also covers watching TV on a *friend's* PC (assuming the
> copyright police haven't declared that illegal).  We might even
> consider using some term more general than "PC", but for now I haven't
> bothered.
>
> >  TV on your PC. A (daily growing) large database of free
> WebTV/WebRadio/WebCam
>
> "A large and growing database" ("daily" is a wild exaggeration).
>
> >  channels in more than 20 languages is accessible. You can also play
> streams
> >  from ISP television services if they provide this feature. Moreover,
> you can
>
> "ISP television services" (and especially the "they" referring back to
> the ISP) doesn't quite work.  The previous sentence was about what's
> accessible; we don't need to switch to second person when we can just
> carry on in the same way.  Maybe:
>
>                        It gives access to a large and growing database of
>    free WebTV, WebRadio, and WebCam channels in more than 20 languages,
>    along with television services provided by ISPs to their subscribers.
>
> (Deliberately ambiguous about whether the IPTV services are in the
> database, since I don't know the answer.)
>

In fact, the database is just an online database (another and related
project) of URL link that maybe downloaded in FreetuxTV.


> >  also easily record each channel with different encoding formats.
>
> "Moreover" plus "also" seems redundant.  More importantly, is it
> saying that it can record them no matter whether they're in PAL or
> NTSC, or is it saying that if you've got 1000 TV channels it can
> easily arrange for each one to be recorded into a different format?
>
> I genuinely can't tell, so for now I'm just going to leave that bit
> out - we've already said it can record things.
>
> >  .
> >  The vlc package provides all multimedia codecs required by freetuxtv.
>
> What's the point of telling me this when vlc is pulled in by a
> "Depends:"?  The fact that FreetuxTV can use any media format
> supported by VLC is already implicit in the fact that it's "based on
> libVLC", isn't it?  But maybe instead of dropping this line we should
> drop the earlier reference to libVLC, and do it like this:
>
>   Description: Internet television and radio player
>    FreetuxTV is a media player for watching and recording television on a
> PC. It
>    gives access to a large and growing database of free WebTV, WebRadio,
> and
>    WebCam channels in more than 20 languages, along with television
> services
>    provided by ISPs to their subscribers.
>    .
>    It relies on VLC for its multimedia codecs.
>
> (WhyTheName footnote: I suspect it wouldn't have got this name if
> there wasn't a French IPTV service called Freebox TV.)
>

For me the patch, seems ok, I will check it with my co-Debian package
maintainer and integrate it with the next upstream version.

 --
> JBR     with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
>         sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
>
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