[pacman-dev] Improving Pacman's messages

[Xavier]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Roman
Kyrylych<roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).
>

It means : (the lockfile is) held by $pid

    error "$(gettext "Failed to acquire lockfile: %s.")" "$LOCKFILE"
    [ -f "$LOCKFILE" ] && error "$(gettext "Held by %s")" "$(cat $LOCKFILE)"

How could we improve these two lines?