Fastlane full description: formatting question

[IzzySoft]

While working on our repo reorg at IzzyOnDroid, I once more stumbled on this – and thought I should bring it up with you, to see which path is best to continue.

As it's currently formatted, the only way to process it is "as plain text", i.e. converting each line break into a <br>. That doesn't exactly look nice:

With a few formatting adjustments, it could be brought into a format that would also render fine as Markdown, which looks much prettier then:

(both screenshots are from our repo browser: the first from F-Droid, which uses the "nl2br" variant, the second from IzzyOnDroid, where we locally adjusted)

It's not good we run with a locally modified version for long, we should keep that in sync with any changes you might make. So my question is which way you would prefer. We could simply switch to "nl2br" at IzzyOnDroid, and be done with it – or we could see to adjust your full_description.txt files to support both, "nl2br" and Markdown (so F-Droid/PlayStore stay happy as well). Seeing the plenty of locales you have here, that would require some work, though – which is why I didn't "simply" create a PR for it.

Example adjustment, going with the start of the en-US/full_description.txt:

<i>SD Maid 2/SE</i> is your Android’s trusted assistant, to keep it clean and tidy.

Nobody is perfect and neither is Android.

* Apps you have already removed leave something behind.
* Logs, crash reports and other files you don't want are constantly being created.
* Your storage is collecting files and folders you don't recognize.
* Duplicate photos in your gallery.

Let’s not go on here… Let SD Maid 2/SE help you!

SD Maid 2/SE is an app and file manager that specializes in knowing which apps have created specific files on your device. SD Maid 2/SE searches your device and compares files with installed apps to offer options for safely freeing up storage space.

✨ Clean up after uninstalling apps  
If apps create files outside their designated folders then files can remain even after uninstalling the apps. The "CorpseFinder" tool finds app remnants, tells you to which app they belonged and helps you delete them.

🔍 Search your device the smart way  
Filter for empty folders, temporary files, already installed apps and more. You can even create your own search criteria. The "SystemCleaner" tool allows you to automatically search your device and delete files based on various criteria.

(as it's not clearly visible: I've added a line break before the bullet-point list, to isolate it – and two spaces to the icon-lead "header lines", resulting in a <br> with Markdown, while staying invisible with "nl2br"). Rendering then would look like this at IzzyOnDroid, with F-Droid unaffected (except for the one empty line in front of the bullet point list):

---

SD Maid 2/SE is your Android’s trusted assistant, to keep it clean and tidy.

Nobody is perfect and neither is Android.

• Apps you have already removed leave something behind.
• Logs, crash reports and other files you don't want are constantly being created.
• Your storage is collecting files and folders you don't recognize.
• Duplicate photos in your gallery.

Let’s not go on here… Let SD Maid 2/SE help you!

SD Maid 2/SE is an app and file manager that specializes in knowing which apps have created specific files on your device. SD Maid 2/SE searches your device and compares files with installed apps to offer options for safely freeing up storage space.

✨ Clean up after uninstalling apps
If apps create files outside their designated folders then files can remain even after uninstalling the apps. The "CorpseFinder" tool finds app remnants, tells you to which app they belonged and helps you delete them.

🔍 Search your device the smart way
Filter for empty folders, temporary files, already installed apps and more. You can even create your own search criteria. The "SystemCleaner" tool allows you to automatically search your device and delete files based on various criteria.

---

What would be your preference? We'd follow that then.

[d4rken]

Thanks for bringing this up.

A few notes:

• I prioritize how it looks in Google Play
• Format changes are problematic, because on sync with Crowdin it triggers re-translation for all languages. In some cases, a single "row" change in the description files, can reset the WHOLE file for that language (because Crowdin has bad support for .txt files).
• I can't make sweeping search+replace changes locally, because of inflexible support for .txt files on Crowdin. It's not possible to force-push locally changed .txt. files to Crowdin (it fails to map them to existing things).

---

So my preference would be minimal changes to the source files unless it also improves the description on Google Play.

I would suggest to go with this:

We could simply switch to "nl2br" at IzzyOnDroid, and be done with it

And I'll keep this ticket open as reminder to also adjust the formatting, when I touch these descriptions again. (I'm currently A/B testing some variants)

So the TODO would be:

• New line before blocks of bullet points
• Double space after Icon Title <-- concerned that this will get lost via Crowdin 🤔

[IzzySoft]

Yupp, thought so – which is why I brought this up as issue first, instead of "rushing to action".

Double space after Icon Title <-- concerned that this will get lost via Crowdin 🤔

I'm pretty sure it will. Alternative would be, similar to the bullet point list: separating by an extra line break.

So I guess the best way forward is:

• go with nl2br for now, while keeping this issue open to "ponder on" (and, hopefully, find a way forward)
• once a way forward is found, and files have been adjusted – but before the release following that is out: give me a ping, so I (can cross-check and) switch from fulldescNL to fulldescMD on our end
• finally, the next release would trigger a fastlane sync when being pulled in, which will then honor the fulldescMD – at which point we're done.

If that sounds good to you, I'd initiate "phase one" (switching to fulldescNL aka nl2br at IzzyOnDroid).

[d4rken]

If that sounds good to you, I'd initiate "phase one" (switching to fulldescNL aka nl2br at IzzyOnDroid).

👍

[IzzySoft]

Done then. When the next release is pulled in, your fulldescs will replace our modified one. Next steps later, when you ring my bell on them. Let's keep this issue open for it, shall we?