[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: final batch of tiny string fixes [patches]
From: |
Jim Meyering |
Subject: |
Re: final batch of tiny string fixes [patches] |
Date: |
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:28:42 +0200 |
Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
>> > - ngettext ("WARNING: %" PRIuMAX " of %" PRIuMAX
>> > - " listed file could not be read",
>> > + ngettext ("WARNING: %" PRIuMAX " file could not be read",
>> ...
>> Ok, but rather, how about rewording it to retain the total number
>> of files considered. That can be important information. Imagine
>> the user thinks she is verifying the checksums of 10 files when
>> in fact only 9 input lines are valid. Omitting the "9" could be
>> fatally misleading.
>
> Hmm... But in general it is unlikely that the user knows how many
"unlikely" isn't a strong enough argument for presenting
less information, when security might be at stake.
> files should be verified. For small numbers, okay, but not for
> tens or hundreds. More importantly, though, this summary line only
> gets printed when one or more checksums do not match, so the user
> will not be alerted to too few files being verified (if she knows
> the total) when all valid lines verify OK. If she wants to be
> alerted to misformatted lines, she should use -w. But when
> verifying lots of files, any such error message will probably
> scroll quickly off the screen, so instead of mentioning the total
> number of checked files, it would be more useful to add another
> summary line that mentions the total number of improperly formatted
> lines. This line should probably be printed before the summary of
> checksum mismatches, and probably only when -w is used.
If you find a way to make it more easily translatable
without removing information, we can revisit this.
>> > - printf (" %19s", " ???");
>> > + /* TRANSLATORS: Real name is unknown; at most 19 characters.
>> > */ + printf (" %19s", _(" ???"));
>> ...
>> Why bother translating these in the first place?
>
> For symmetry, because in print_long_entry() it is gettextized too.
> And because some languages may have a special word or character or
> designation for "unknown name", "unknown person", "unknown thing".
> Or some translators may simply prefer to use a clearer message
> than " ???".
Ok. You've convinced me. I applied that, too.
>> I would welcome a patch that unifies and (if possible) then
>> factors out some of the duplication displayed by this command:
>>
>> grep -E 'MB? =?10..\*10' src/*.c
>
> Okay. But I won't have time to make this: in a few days I will
> break camp. So this will probably be my last message to this list,
> not counting the upcoming pings.
Thanks again for all your work.