Re: desktop schemas review [was: Re: GSettings migration status]

[Christian Persch <chpe gnome org>]

Hi;

Am Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:29:13 +0100
schrieb Philip Withnall <philip tecnocode co uk>:
> On Sat, 2010-07-03 at 19:48 +0200, Christian Persch wrote:
> > Am Sat, 03 Jul 2010 17:08:36 +0200
> > schrieb Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>:
> > > If only one string was provided, it would be a pain to find what
> > > a key is supposed to do without reading the full description. And
> > > that's what makes the settings database more useful than a mere
> > > addition of binary values (for example, if we want a « plumbing
> > > tool » to tweak advanced settings, we need it to have short and
> > > useful summaries).
> > 
> > Makes sense. We should at least discourage schema writers from
> > making the description just a reworded summary.
> > 
> > Or, let's only have the one <description> string, and take the first
> > line (paragraph?) of it as the "summary", and any extra text as
> > detail that will only be displayed in a tooltip, 'detailed info'
> > area, etc.
> > 
> > Like we do for our git commit messages :)
> 
> Isn't that somewhat betraying the idea of XML as a _structured_
> representation of data?

True.

So I'd settle for the style Ryan proposes in the other reply, and
telling schema writers that it's ok to omit <description> if it would
end up just being a slightly reworded summary. (As is the case in many
current gconf schemas.)

Regards,
	Christian