Bug#649717: Strange wording in package description

[Justin B Rye]

Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Justin B Rye a écrit :
[...]
>>             http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/SymbolicIcons
> 
> Yes. Also, they are more intended for use on a dark background. For example:
> Normal: [image] Symbolic: [image]
>
[...]
>     Maybe when this package description says "symbolic" it means
>     "graphically simple"?
> 
> Feel free to propose another wording for the package description.

Thanks; your examples make it clear that the theme is indeed
"graphically simple", or perhaps "highly conventionalised".

The descriptions for the gnome-icon-theme-* packages don't seem
particularly standardised, except that most of them mention repeatedly
that they're for GTK+ 2.x.  The version numbers imply
gnome-icon-theme-symbolic still works with GNOME 3, but I won't
suggest it should start being any more specific about that.

Looking at the current text again:

- Description: GNOME Desktop icon theme (symbolic icons)

I'd leave this alone apart from the capitalisation.  The uppercase "D"
in "GNOME Desktop" is inconsistent with the way it's written in the
long description, and then "Symbolic" is in effect an arbitrary name
for the theme, parallel to "BlankOn" and "Suede".

-  This package contains the default icon theme used by the GNOME desktop.
-  The icons are used in the panel menu, and in nautilus and other
-  applications, to represent the different applications, files,
-  directories, and devices.

This text is standard boilerplate used for other themes too.
Unfortunately the first line is poorly phrased: different packages
offer different themes, so how can each one contain "*the* default
icon theme used by the GNOME desktop"?  I'll try to clarify, leaving
out the word "default" because I just don't see how it fits in. 

-  .
-  This package contains symbolic icons for the default GNOME icon theme.

Instead of saying that it contains icons for the default theme, it
would be closer to the truth to say that it provides a theme for the
default icons!

A first-draft suggestion:

+ Description: GNOME desktop icon theme (Symbolic icons)
+  This package contains an icon theme for use by the GNOME desktop.
+  The icons are used in the panel menu, and in nautilus and other
+  applications, to represent the different applications, files,
+  directories, and devices.
+  .
+  This package contains a simple, conventionalized icon set following
+  the FreeDesktop.Org guidelines for symbolic variations.

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