Bug#578657: apt-cache policy should use TABs in format string to ease l10n

[Ralf Gesellensetter <Ralf.Gesellensetter@web.de>]

Hi Andres, thanks for your statement. This is my objections:

Am Mittwoch, 21. April 2010 18:04:17 schrieb Julian Andres Klode:
> We have users parsing the output of apt-cache policy, so changing the
> output format is not an option. We have the same problem in progress

Is the output of apt-cache policy meant to be optimized for human or for 
machine reading? If there are scripts reading the output, they should be 
stable to whitespaces. In my opinion, it is a BUG, if a \t is omitted by 
ignoring other languages. It's a case of invalid generalization.

> reporting which looks much more organized in English than in German,
> due to the length("Get") != length("Hole").
> 
Of course, this is not the only bug.

In this case, anyway, the versions of cadidate and installed are designed 
to be aligned (therefore there are two lines), but the localisation of 
that design is hindered by using a single whitespace where there should be 
a tabulator. Translators cannot see that they should insert spaces to 
match correct alignment...

Maybe this should be discussed on a wider base, before marking as Wontfix.
Maybe this issue is worth a section in general policies about i18n.

Kind regards
Ralf