great that some people here volunteer to enhance descriptions! Thanks for that, in the name of all people who like to explore new software, even if they don't need it. Persons like me, who are curious enough to check out even packages with software they don't really need, will admire that!
Just like Fusion_Power said, a focus on previewpics would help a lot for finding new, interesting PNDs.
I would even go so far as to suggest that previewpics should be considered at least as important as the textual description, and every PND should have at least four of them.
I also believe that the introduction of short videos would be the one best addition to any PND repository given the typical focus on multimedia content.
However, my appeal actually went more towards the ones who build the PND packages.
I believe the approach to achieve improvements is less than ideal then. It would probably be a good thing to create a short explanation of what a good description looks like, along with some negative examples, and sew that into the main ways developers put descriptions into their PNDs.
(...) I renamed my package with title "vnStat" to "vnStat Network Traffic Counter".
Unfortunately, only "vnStat Network Traffic" is shown on the Repo's summary (home) page. So I see it's also important to find short meaningful names.
I think that name fields should always be used for nothing but the actual name of the application. Would it make sense to introduce a dedicated short-description alongside the current longer <description> element?
When I did PCSX rearmed I thought about doing some screenshots, but then it came to me that copyrighted game screenshots can still be considered copyrighted material by themselves, or don't they?
More importantly, these screenshots would not display PCSx, but rather some random emulated games, which would be confusing as the package doesn't contain these games but an emulator.
edit-05feb2012-1836GMT+2: Before there was any software repository or the appstore, I began making a package manager that had a focus on screenshots for easier finding of new games. Here are some work-in-progress-ish guidelines for ideal screenshots that I had made back then:
- Ideally, screenshot 0 of your game should show a typical (usually main-) menu (if applicable), screenshots 1 and 2 should show typical ingame action (if applicable), screenshot 3 should show ingame action, either typical or uncommon (if applicable). Only EITHER screenshot 2 or 3 should show something different if necessary. (unless any of that doesn't make sense in your particular case, of course)
- Is your "game" a "utility" or some other kind of non-game? Use meaningful screenshots then. You should crop AND scale your screenshots so they reflect important "parts" of your software. Screenshots 0 and 3 should show parts which demonstrate what makes your software special (if applicable, otherwise treat them similar to screenshot 2), screenshot 2 should show a part that IN ADDITION shows the user what kind of software it is that you're giving her (text editor, emulator, media player, IDE...). Screenshot 1 should be focused solely on communicating what kind of software your software is (Any way to accomplish this is a good way in screenshot 1, as long as the user "gets the idea". Be creative and don't have fears to try out weird ideas in screenshot 1, but only do this if it's not a game or it WILL look silly!).
Thus, in my sometimes not so humble opinion, good previewpics for PCSx would be:
- A zoomed-in part of the main emulator menu (I have never used PCSx, therefore I don't know whether this is applicable), since the most used user interface is immediately recognized by people familiar with the software.
- An image that is not really a screenshot but makes immediately clear that PCSx is an emulator, without using the PCSx icon in that image.
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