[RFC] gnuwin32/kde-windows package format

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 03.01.08 15:07:12, Michael G. Hansen wrote:
> Saro Engels wrote:
> > II.3. In the first line of the .ver file there has to be the name of the 
> > package, followed by a space and the version of the package, followed by 
> > a space or a colon and a space and one out of 'Binaries', 'Developer 
> > Files', 'Documentation' or 'Sources'. The case of those tags should be 
> > ignored. If present, the second line starts again with the packagename, 
> > optionally followed by a colon, followed by a space character and 
> > followed by the description of the package (within that line).
> I think an encoding should be specified for the package-description 
> (UTF-8?).

Not only the description, all textual fields of the packaging metadata
needs to be in a proper unicode encoding. And of course from those utf-8
is the most space-preserving so is probably the best option.

> Another issue is localization of the description. Debian for 
> example is starting to provide localizations of package descriptions. 
> How about:
> kate:en: A text editor
> kate:de: Ein Text-Editor
> This opens up the possibility of translation for later.

Hmm, how does Debian do that? Do we want the translations inside the
packaging metadata? Or can we do something like the gettext format, so
we extract the descriptions and ship a compressed format of the
translations. I mean if you update the translations in the metadata you
need to package a new version of that app, while if they're somewhat
external you don't.

Andreas

-- 
Better hope the life-inspector doesn't come around while you have your
life in such a mess.