Templates and all user intraction strings consistency

[Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>]

Hello (again) folks,

I just finished a general work on french translations for (mostly)
templates used in d-i.

The goal was, after seeing my first tests of the installer, to get
some consistency in the various templates and menus shown to the use
during installation.

During this work (with the help of Denis who commited my changes while
I posted them to debian-l10n-french), I made some assumptions :

-menu entries use the infinitive form : "Exécuter un shell" instead of
"Exécution d'un shell"...thus "(To) execute to shell"....Thanks to
Denis, these are now easy to find in the *.po files

-Boolean templates
  -the short form is a question which should be kept short. This 
   sometimes needs to make telegraphic-style phrases as french
   usually uses more room than english

  -the long form should NOT include a question

-String templates (as well as Select/Multi-Select templates)
  -the short form is a prompt and NOT a title. I follow Joey's wishes
   about this and the planned/suggested modifications to cdebconf for
   having it behave like debconf.
   I prohibit question style prompts ("IP Address?") in favour of
   "opened" prompts ("Adresse IP").
   I do NOT use colons at the end (but maybe should I ?)

  -the long form is a description of what is expected. No question
   here and always phrases. Telegraphic style prohibited

-Notes
  -the short form should be considered as a *title*. Here also I
   follow Joey's suggestions...hoping I understood him well

  -the long form is what will be displayed as a more detailed
   explanation of the note. Phrases, no telegraphic style.


While doing this, I focused on french. However, the more I progressed
in this work, the more it became evident that english templates
currently HAVE NO CONSISTENCY AT ALL.  

This is maybe a choice : first focus on having the whole stuff work,
then polish it by properly formulating questions and all user input.

This has however one major drawback : when making the last polishing,
this will require subsequent work from translators in order to adapt
their translations.

So, why not start by making a first polishing of all this *now* ?
  


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