bug#20354: [feature request] ln with command line arguments in reverse order

[Ma Jiehong]

The translation in the help message is not wrong, and "TARGET" and 
"LINK_NAME" are used.

The issue simply is with the mental model made when approaching the "ln" 
command. In French, the usual way to say when creating a link is: "Je 
vais créer une lien A pointant vers B", which can be literally 
translated as "I will create a link named A pointing on B".

This is wrong, as it should be more something like "Je vais lier A et B" 
would be better ("I will link A and B"), but A and B are implicitly 
already existing when thinking about this sentence.

Checking the help message of "ln" clarifies this, but it's 
counter-intuitive in French, and most people tend to make a mistake in 
the order of argument of "ln", and then re-do it with arguments in 
reverse order. (me first, even though I use the cli everyday…)

Is that clearer?

Perhaps French people are just doomed to have an issue with the "ln" 
command.

J.

On 17/04/15 13:12, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> On 04/17/2015 10:39 AM, Ma Jiehong wrote:
> > Currently, 'cp', 'mv' and 'ln' share the same basic syntax, that is 
> > to say the following:
> >
> > cp [OPTION]  SOURCE DEST
> > mv [OPTION] SOURCE DEST
> > ln [OPTIONS] TARGET LINK_NAME
> >
> > Which is the same exact rule, and is consistent.
> >
> > While this is perfect for 'cp' and 'mv', I claim that it shouldn't be 
> > the case for 'ln'.
> >
> > This analysis comes from experience, a discussion from linuxfr.org 
> > (French),
> >  and also from a design point of view.
> >
> > These 3 operations are verbs, and we could read those commands as 
> > "copy source
> >  to destination", "move source to destination" and "link source to 
> > destination".
> >
> > But a big part of the French population at least, would tend to read the
> > link verb as "create a link (named) A pointing on B".
>
> My French from school is a bit rusty, but are you sure this isn't a 
> problem of
> the translation?  I mean, the wording "link source to destination" is 
> somehow
> correct:  the SOURCE is the (probably) already existing TARGET, where the
> resulting symlink (LINK_NAME/DEST) will resolve to.  Therefore one 
> could also
> see it like "ln ... SOURCE DEST", because there is only SOURCE where 
> several
> symbolic links point to.  But TARGET and LINK_NAME is a much clearer 
> term.
>
> > Therefore, I would like to offer the possibility to use "ln" with 
> arguments
> > in the reverse order, given an option, say "--reverse-order/-R".
> >
> > In this case, the command would act like this:
> > ln --reverse-order LINK_NAME TARGET
>
> Adding an option to reverse the two may have it's merits, but I guess 
> this
> extra flexibility would only confuse the users even more.
> The situation would be better if the target would be an operand to that
> option, similar to mv's --target-directory=DIRECTORY option.
> However, I think this would just bloat the code for not much new 
> functionality,
> and I'm convinced that a good translation for TARGET and LINK_NAME in 
> --help
> output would be the better way.
>
> Have a nice day,
> Berny