Screenshots of GUI applications (again)

To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Cc: "Roberto C. Sanchez" <roberto@connexer.com>

Subject: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)

From: Christoph Haas <haas@debian.org>

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:05:03 +0200

Message-id: <[🔎] 200807221705.03875.haas@debian.org>

Dear list... the matter has been discussed at least twice already. Roberto C. Sanchez brought the matter back up in January 2008. The response was very positive but nobody wanted to implement that. Several Debian end users in my circle would surely be happy about having screenshots available for GUI applications to get a quick impression of how different GUI programs look/feel like without tediously installing, trying and deinstalling them. The "Description:" doesn't really give a good mental picture and different maintainers choose different wordings there which makes applications hard to compare by just reading the text. So I'd like to get things moving. I assume we had to do this: - Propose a new optional debian/control field "X-Screenshot:" pointing to an URL serving an image file (PNG, JPG) [debian-devel-announce as soon as we are ready?] - Create a new tree on hg.debian.org to host screenshots. - Alternatively provide a web service that hosts screenshots so that packages can point to it (e.g. http://screenshots.debian.net/PACKAGE). The service should also scale down the pictures to a reasonable size suitable for thumbnail display (max 150x150). (I can program that if needed. The only problem is probably authenticating the maintainer. Maybe a simple email interface checking PGP signatures will do. Needs further brainstorming.) - Change packages.debian.org to show the thumbnail from the package's control file. I will work on a patch if desired. - Add this feature to package managers (synaptic, kpackage, ...). I don't know enough about GUI programming yet that I could possibly help here. Actually that doesn't sound too hard. And it would be a neat little service. Let me know what you think and please step forward if you are already working on something like that. This time we will really do it. :) Kindly Christoph -- ~ ~ ".signature" [Modified] 1 line --100%-- 1,48 All