Re: filenames in error messages

[Bruno Haible]

Karl Berry wrote:
> what is *natural* for compiler-like error messages in our world?  \.  IMHO.

The section in the GNU standards also specifies the error formatting for
"other noninteractive programs":

   PROGRAM:SOURCE-FILE-NAME:LINENO: MESSAGE

Later it also talks about interactive programs and recommends this:

   SOURCE-FILE-NAME:LINENO: MESSAGE

I thought you were discussing this too?

When a user is getting an error message from 'msgfmt', and the user is a
translator who has never written any code in any programming language,
why should the error message she shall see be influenced by the syntax
of programming languages?

When a user is burning a CD from a description of its TOC stored in a file,
and this TOC file has a syntax error, why should the error message use
double-quotes and backslash as syntax characters?

There are maybe 10 million users of our system and our programs. 9.5 millions
at least know URLs, and maybe 1 million knows what %20 means. How many out
of the 10 million are C programmers?

Bruno