Re: please indicate where messages in debconf dialogue are worth a bug report
Markus Hiereth wrote:
>> If we were working from the .template file, we'd know...
>
> your remark made me searching the sources, using the string "for
> upgrade". I found
>
> https://sources.debian.org/src/postfix/3.3.0-1/debian/templates
>
> Default values for input and selections aren't lost during the
> creation of message catalogues (pot-files).
But (it now becomes clear) there's a later paragraph
# Thus, if a mail address on the local host is foo@example.org,
# the correct value for this option would be example.org.
...which may be the only reason for mentioning it. If so it might
have made more sense to integrate the warning message into this
example:
the correct value for this option would be example.org (though please note...
> Difficulties (for me) arise as it is often not clear whether strings
> appear on one or on different pages and how the strings are placed on
> a page. The package podebconf-display-po helps here.
Unfortunately I'm marooned in Windowsland until the weekend. It is at
least teaching me to be more patient with correspondents who have
never used anything better.
> > Meanwhile,I know what "upstream" means in the context of Debian
>> > software packages. Nevertheless I would recommend to replace the word
>> > by something tangible.
>
> The German language team tends to replace "upstream" in translations,
> apparently because rivers and software engineering have not too much
> in common.
>
> upstream ... -
> Ursprung-; sollte teilweise umschrieben werden (>>the upstream
> author<< => >>der Autor dieses Programms<<, >>ursprünglicher
> Autor<<); manchmal ist auch >>Original-<< sinnvoll (>>upstream
> sources<< => >>Original-Quelltexte<<).
English "upstream" is rather like (for instance) "the police": it's
treated as a plain singular in en-US but often becomes a "team plural"
in en-GB - "upstream has/have been unresponsive".
> upstream author -
> ursprünglicher Autor; Programmautor
>
> upstream maintainer -
> ursprünglicher Betreuer
>
> (from https://wiki.debian.org/Wortliste)
Oh, well, thanks, at least that's some interesting pages to browse
until I'm back on my PC.
>> It may be jargon, but the problem is that there's no safe
>> alternative; "the authors of Postfix" might include the Debian (or
>> indeed Ubuntu) maintainer, so it's not a good way of drawing the
>> contrast.
>
> I thought that the focus of package maintainers is to compile, to care
> for dependencies on libraries and to prepare/support configuration by
> users.
And sometimes to produce and/or forward patches to the source code
dealing with bugs reported by Debian users. It's generally agreed
that it's best to minimise divergence between the Debian and upstream
versions, but the minimum isn't always zero - upstream might for
instance hard-code in the assumption that the fallback text editor is
"vi", while Debian Policy says it should be "editor". Then again some
packages have dormant upstreams, or have upstreams that include the
Debian maintainer. And it's so easy to get onto "CONTRIBUTORS" lists
that I'm on some myself without even being a programmer!
--
JBR
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