[pacman-dev] Improving Pacman's messages

[Aaron Griffin]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Giovanni Scafora<giovanni at archlinux.org> wrote:
> 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.

I totally agree here. My work translating to en_GB is very difficult!

Kidding! :)