[pacman-dev] Improving Pacman's messages

[Matthias Gorissen]

I agree with others that some parts of pacman's output is quite crappy. It is 
probably the common case in which some line is totally self-evident to devs, 
quite cryptically to translators, and almost incomprehensible to users.

I think that we should set up a wiki-page or a simple todo-list on that - to 
ensure that this issue will not get lost in 3.3.1.

Am Wednesday 29 July 2009 22:01:25 schrieb 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.