[GRASS-dev] Message standardization

Michael Barton michael.barton at asu.edu
Wed Jun 13 11:12:22 EDT 2007


Module descriptions are a different sort of beast from error messages--and
from GUI messages and other descriptors. All need standardization, but I'd
recommend doing them one at a time so as not to overwhelm everyone.

If we can standardize error messages first it might be the simplest piece to
attack. Then move on to others like module descriptions in the module code,
module doc formatting, GUI, etc.

Michael


On 6/13/07 2:36 AM, "Hamish" <hamish_nospam at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton





More information about the grass-dev mailing list