[gentoo-dev] Improving use.desc

[Santiago M. Mola]

Hi,

A lot of people have complaints about the quality of USE flag
descriptions, so let's see if we can improve them a bit.

This a list of some descriptions which could be improved. Some are
just stupid things like trailing dot (not a bad thing, but most of
them doesn't have one) and some others are quite significant.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Objections?

-Xaw3d - Adds support of the 3d athena widget set
+Xaw3d - Adds support for the 3d athena widget set

-apache2 - Add Apache2 support
+apache2 - Add Apache2 HTTP Server support

-audiofile - Adds support for libaudiofile where applicable
+audiofile - Adds support for libaudiofile (processing audio data to
and from audio files in AIFF, AIFC, WAVE, and NeXT/Sun)

-avahi - Add avahi/Zeroconf support
+avahi - Add avahi/Zeroconf support (easy service discovery on local networks)

-bcmath - Adds support for libbcmath
+bcmath - Adds support for libbcmath --FIXME

-branding - Enable Gentoo specific branding
+branding - Enable Gentoo specific branding (artwork, special
functionality, and others)

-cscope - Enables cscope interface -- in vim for example
+cscope - Enables cscope (source code browsing) interface -- in vim for example

-ctype - Enables ctype functions
+ctype - Enables ctype functions --FIXME

-dbus - Enable dbus support for anything that needs it (gpsd, gnomemeeting, etc)
+dbus - Enable DBus support (a simple way for applications to talk to
one another)

-emacs - Adds support for GNU Emacs
+emacs - Adds support for GNU Emacs text editor

-evo - Adds support for evolution
+evo - Adds support for mail-client/evolution

-examples - Install example source code
+examples - Install examples, usually source code

-expat - Enable the use of dev-libs/expat
+expat - Enable the use of dev-libs/expat for XML parsing

-ffmpeg - Enable ffmpeg support
+ffmpeg - Enable ffmpeg support --FIXME

-flac - Adds support for the flac audio codec
+flac - Adds support for FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec

-geoip - Add geoip support
+geoip - Add geoip support for country and city lookup based on IPs

-gnuplot - Enable gnuplot support
+gnuplot - Enable support for gnuplot (data and function plotting)

-gnutls - Adds support for net-libs/gnutls
+gnutls - Adds support for net-libs/gnutls (TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0 support)

-jpeg2k - Support for JPEG 2000, a wavelet-based image compression format.
+jpeg2k - Support for JPEG 2000, a wavelet-based image compression format

-junit - Adds junit awareness -- useful for developers.
+junit - Adds junit awareness -- useful for developers

-kdeenablefinal - EXPERIMENTAL: KDE ebuilds will use the enable-final
flag, yielding compilation speedups at the cost of heavy mem usage and
potentially causing problems. We strongly discourage setting this.
+kdeenablefinal - EXPERIMENTAL: KDE ebuilds will use the enable-final
flag, yielding compilation speedups at the cost of heavy mem usage and
potentially causing problems. We strongly discourage setting this

-kerberos - Adds kerberos support
+kerberos - Adds support for the kerberos network authentication protocol

-libcaca - Add support for colored ASCII-art graphics
+libcaca - Add support for colored ASCII-art graphics (with media-libs/libcaca)

-libnotify - Enable notification support
+libnotify - Enable notification support --FIXME

-matroska - Adds support for the matroska container format
+matroska - Adds support for the matroska container format (extensions
.mkv, .mka and .mks)

-modplug - Adds libmodplug support
+modplug - Adds libmodplug support (for MOD-like music files)

-mpeg - Adds libmpeg3 support to various packages.
+mpeg - Adds libmpeg3 support to various packages. --FIXME: This is no
longer true

-pda - Adds support for portable devices.
+pda - Adds support for portable devices

-perl - Adds support/bindings for the Perl language.
+perl - Adds support/bindings for the Perl language

-php - Include support for php
+php - Include support for the PHP language

-pic - Build Position Independent Code.  Do not utilize this flag
unless you know what you're doing.
+pic - Build Position Independent Code.  Do not utilize this flag
unless you know what you're doing

-pulseaudio - Adds support for PulseAudio sound server
+pulseaudio - Adds support for PulseAudio sound server (ex-PolypAudio)

-sharedext - Adds support for building shared extensions in php
+sharedext - Adds support for building shared extensions in PHP

-simplexml - support for simplexml
+simplexml - support for SimpleXML

-sndfile - Adds support for libsndfile
+sndfile - Adds support for libsndfile reading and writing files
containing sampled sound (supporting lots of formats)

-speex - Adds support for the speex audio codec
+speex - Adds support for the speex audio codec (used for speech)

-svg - Adds support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).
+svg - Adds support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)

-tiff - Adds support for the tiff image format
+tiff - Adds support for the TIFF image format

-vim-syntax - Pulls in related vim syntax scripts.
+vim-syntax - Pulls in related vim syntax scripts

Regards,
Santiago

-- 
Santiago M. Mola
Jabber ID: cooldwind@×××××.com
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