[pacman-dev] Improving Pacman's messages

[Allan McRae]

Xavier wrote:
> 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?

How about  "Held by process %s"?

Allan