Bug 12301

Summary:	Error in package description of units
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	andré blais <andr999>
Component:	RPM Packages	Assignee:	Mageia Bug Squad <bugsquad>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:
Severity:	minor
Priority:	Normal	CC:	luigiwalser, rverschelde, thierry.vignaud
Version:	3	Keywords:	Junior_job
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Source RPM:	units-2.01-2.mga3.src.rpm	CVE:
Status comment:

Description andré blais 2014-01-14 17:02:25 CET

Description of problem:
The package description contains the text :

"The âunits' program converts quantities expressed in various scales to
their equivalents in other scales.  The âunits' program can handle multiplicative scale changes as well as nonlinear conversions such as Fahrenheit to Celsius. Temperature and other nonlinear conversions are handled using a functional notation."

However temperature conversions are linear.
(To verify, one can plot the corresponding temperatures.  It produces a straight line, even though for Fahreinheit/Celcius it will not pass through 0,0.)

It would be better to replace the text after the first sentence with something like :
"Conversions with offsets (such as Fahreinheit/Celcius) and non-linear conversions are handled using a functional notation."

Or Simply changing the first sentence to :

"The âunits' program converts quantities expressed in various scales to
their equivalents in other scales, including linear and non-linear conversions."

and dropping the rest.

How reproducible:
Read the description via mcc/rpmdrake -or- rpm -qi info


Reproducible: 

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1 David Walser 2014-01-15 00:01:32 CET

Thanks for the report.  Though it has changed over time, I believe the package description came from the upstream webpage:
http://www.gnu.org/software/units/units.html

which still calls temperature conversions Nonlinear (which is nonsense).  Could you try reporting this upstream and see if they fix this or clarify it somehow?  It'd be nice to keep the package description in line with the upstream page, rather than having to write it ourselves.

CC: (none) => luigiwalser

Comment 2 andré blais 2014-01-15 06:39:46 CET

Will do.
The upstream web page has a totally different description, and the upstream packages are not rpms, so I thought that maybe the description was done when the rpm was made.
(I'm actually tempted to rewrite the program.  Evidently not written by a programmer, or at least not one with a sense of a coherent user interface.)

...

Reported upstream, suggesting changing the description to the last version in comment 1.
I suggest that we make this change ourselves, assuming that it will be done in their next release.

Comment 3 Thierry Vignaud 2014-01-15 07:00:47 CET

Too late for mga4, we're in deep freeze

Keywords: (none) => Junior_job
CC: (none) => thierry.vignaud
Target Milestone: --- => Mageia 5

Comment 4 andré blais 2014-01-15 21:10:27 CET

It's not urgent, I just encountered it by chance.

Upstream thinks he is probably the source of the description, and said he had a lot of complaints from people "misunderstanding linear".
So I informed him of the standard definition of linear, hopefully he will correct it.
If not, the program should probably be rewritten by a real programmer anyway.
(Maybe if I find the time ...)

Target Milestone: Mageia 5 => ---

Comment 5 Rémi Verschelde 2014-12-13 13:20:54 CET

Fixed in http://svnweb.mageia.org/packages?view=revision&revision=802897

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => remi
Resolution: (none) => FIXED