Re: comments/string changes and issues with dpkg's messages
Quoting Eddy Petrisor (eddy.petrisor@gmail.com):
> Hello,
>
> As I have said in at a previous time, I have started working on adding
> comments in the dpkg code, in order to add automatic comments to the
> translatable strings.
WONDERFUL.
If you can do it on your own TLA branch, that'd be great. See Scott's
wonderful explanations about arch/tla/baz at http://www.dpkg.org
> 2) in some languages forms like "3 installed packages", "1 installed package"
> and "6 installed packages" need three different forms for the word
ngettext is what you need as others explained.
> 3) in some cases the messages are so cryptical that rephrasing them would be a
> much better solution than adding automatic comments:
>
Rephrase...
> Solutions:
> a) change the messages
> consequnce:
> - translations will be fuzzied; many translators will cuss at me
> + messages will be easier to translate
> + no more changes will be necessary later
> + messages will be easy to understand for regular Joes (although they will
> probably won't be able to do anything with the resulted info
Do this. We are at a moiment in the devel cycle where breaking
translaiton is not *that* a problem. After all, working with broken
strings is our daily life..:-)
More seriously, even if I sometimes have to slow down upstream by
requesting not changing strings too often, when a string is broken, it
has to be fixed, whether or not it breaks the translations.
> 4) the best packaging practices states that the program should not "speak
> as a person"; impersonal messages are preffered.
>
> this is what I have found, at a glance:
> "...like what you want, and you can `reject' my suggestions by using the
> capital..." - there shouldn't be "my sugestions"
> =>
> "and you can `reject' the suggestions by using the capital"
Yes, also. Throw out these "amateur-style" messages. There is NO
REASON to use first person in a computer program.
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