[GRASS-dev] Message standardization

[Hamish]

Michael Barton wrote:
> 
> There is considerable back and forth (thoughtful) about periods. For
> easy consistency, I'd simply go with: sentence ends with period;
> phrase does not end with period. (and as HB says sentence != phrase).
> Save ellipses for pending operations (Reading...).

Standardization by place: module descriptions should be sentence-like
and end with periods (consistently), option and flag descriptions are
mostly phrase-like and don't end with punctuation.

e.g.
- the file tools/module_synopsis.sh makes looks weird if 1/4 of the
modules' descriptions don't end with a dot.

- as Carlos just noticed, the tcl GUI appends ":" after the option
descriptions, and punctuation before that looks bad. If the option
description is multi-sentence and it looks odd in the help page for the
last sentence not to end with a period, while the first one does, the
solution is to split the string up into short ->label and tooltip
->description parts.


I am unsure if all G_fatal_error(), G_warning(), and G_message() should
have "." or not. IMHO things like "Operation complete" and "Done" on a
line by themselves look stronger as a punctuated statement, but others
may disagree.


We can agree that the first letter of all messages should be capitalized?


Hamish