Hi Faré,

Probably, I'm the first one who started the custom.

However, I suppose it's technically not widely used because of Quickdocs,

since it also searchs README file at the project root.

Perhaps, it may be because CL-Project, my project generator, has been adding the code to the new ASD file.

https://github.com/fukamachi/cl-project/blob/master/cl-project.asd#L33-L35

I just thought it might be useful if it could be refer by calling 'asdf:system-long-description' from REPL,

or someone would make some utility tool using long-description in the future.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of it anymore and I don't follow it in my recent products.

I'm willing to delete the code from CL-Project, though I have nothing I can do for existing projects.

On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 1:15 PM Faré <fahree@gmail.com> wrote:

I've seen the pattern of using
:long-description
#.(uiop:read-file-string
(uiop:subpathname *load-pathname* "README.md"))
spread among CL libraries.

I see it only as a waste of kilobytes of data (quadrupled on 32-bit
unicode lisps such as SBCL).

I'm told it's because Quickdocs likes it this way.

Since there is not (yet?) any type enforcement on the value of that
field, can we instead agree for an alternate format, wherein the field
would instead contain the pathname of the long-description file,
relative to the (asdf:system-source-directory) ? Thus you'd use:
:long-description #p"README.md"
And Quickdocs and other documentation tools would do the right thing from there.

Maybe I'm just an old-school code bummer but I'm always saddened by a
waste of bytes.

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great
satisfaction. — Clarence Darrow