[pacman-dev] Improving Pacman's messages

[Giovanni Scafora]

2009/7/29, Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com>:
> 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.

I totally agree here.


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