Hello all,
Yes, indeed, this is a mail regarding the recurrent problem of badly
written error messages in dpkg.
Similar strings which are not merged, although they should be:
--remove needs a single argument
--remove needs one arguments
Note also the error in the second message (this will need unfuzzification)
"You need --help."
"You need --help"
All messages like:
--remove needs a single argument
--add needs a single argument
--remove needs a single argument
--truename needs a single argument
could be compressed as "--%s needs a single argument", like it was
done in the C code parts of dpkg.
Way too spartan messages to be understood (I looked at the code and
couldn't understand how they should have been translated as, until I
realised the format was "operation that was attempted: error string")
rename: remove duplicate old link `%s': %s
error checking `%s': %s
close diversions-new: %s
remove old diversions-old: %s
... and many others.
First person talk, it should be impersonal talk:
"%s: failed to install %s; I'll leave it as %s: %s"
Comments missing badly:
"read %s: %s" - is this present or past form
"close %s after read: %s" - this needs badly an explanation.
I understand these strings just became translatable due to fixing of
#165843, but still there is room for improvement.