Server: Allow app <description> tag to be outsourced to a Markdown file

[BernhardPosselt]

Proposing this here first:

Currently the store parses a CHANGELOG.md in the apps root directory if present and allows for translation by adding the isocode like this: CHANGELOG.de.md

What if we extended that to the description as well, e.g. DESCRIPTION.md? Benefits would include:

• better editor support
• not having to fight with indention in your xml file (because indention is significant in xml)
• not having to care about properly escaping your Markdown
• better readability since it can be rendered on GitHub
• better scalability if you add more than 1 language or a bigger description

Downsides would include:

• yet another backwards compat feature
• https://github.com/nextcloud/appstore/blob/master/nextcloudappstore/api/v1/release/info.xsd#L13 would have to be changed to allow minOccurs="0" or a new attribute like
• translation (although I'm unsure if this is handled at all currently)
• owncloud compat (if that's a thing)

Since all the Markdown files could clutter up your root app directory we should support putting it into a .nextcloud/ folder whose structure is yet to be determined.

By default we could test for the presence of a Markdown file in the appropriate place and fall back to the description tag otherwise

[blizzz]

overall :+1:

translation (although I'm unsure if this is handled at all currently)

why is that a downside? Unless it would be required.

owncloud compat (if that's a thing)

There are already differences, aren't they? And it's becoming a topic when you really want to do advantage of this feature, but then the ball is on the other court. Otherwise it is just a backwards-compatibility thing.

[blizzz]

what do others think? e.g. @nickvergessen @MorrisJobke @juliushaertl

[nickvergessen]

not sure if we should use a .nextcloud/ folder thou.
Could also just put it into appinfo/

But :+1: for the idea to allow it in a separate place

[MorrisJobke]

better scalability if you add more than 1 language or a bigger description

The plan was anyways to extract this automatically and put it on transifex. Then how it is stored doesn’t matter for the developer anymore as it is machine readable only anyway.

[juliushaertl]

The plan was anyways to extract this automatically and put it on transifex. Then how it is stored doesn’t matter for the developer anymore as it is machine readable only anyway.

That sounds good to me, otherwise app developers would have several places where they need to maintain translations.