[pacman-dev] Improving Pacman's messages

[Roman Kyrylych]

Hi!

During my translation of pacman/libalpm files
I've noticed a significant number of inconsistencies
and messages that are difficult to translate to a language
that is quite different from Western European languages
without knowing in what context they are used
and what kind of text can hide behind %s.
(e.g. what "Held by %s" is supposed to mean?
if translated directly to my language without specifying
a type of %s object the meaning will be confusing).

To all pacman committers:
_please_ use consistent and descriptive text.
I am sure that some messages could be made more specific,
not only simplifying the work of translators,
but also understanding by users.

In addition, it would be easier for translators if some
native English speaker could check .pot files before string freeze.
It seems to me that there may be some duplicates removed,
and alot of related messages made more consistent.

I understand that text cosmetics is not a top priority
when developing some new feature,
but doing some text cleanup before string freeze
(while keeping in mind that every single line of text
may and will be translated to a (very) different language,
_and_ trying to make the text look clear for most users)
does worth some time spent.
I can do such work for next pacman releases
(not sure if I can "generate" good English messages
since it's not my native language, but at least I can
point to a text that's not clear to understand/translate etc.)

I know it's too late to make such changes now,
but I hope this can be done for future pacman releases.

-- 
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)