[GRASS-dev] Message standardization

[Carlos Dávila]

Hamish escribió:
> Carlos Dávila wrote:
>   
>> I'm new in dev list, but I've been working in translations for some
>> time. I would like to standardize some grass messages, according to
>> what is proposed in
>> http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/Development_Specs (please check
>> last changes) in order to ease the work for translators and get a 
>> more consistent program. I don't know if standard messages proposed in
>> wiki can already be used or if discussion is still open. Any feedback
>> is welcome. If no objections are reported, I will start changing
>> messages in the next days, at least the most obvious.
>>     
>
>
> The ideas on the wiki page are just the opinions of a few of us who
> edited the page AFAICT, not a full consensus reached on the -dev mailing
> list which it needs to be before any mass change. So that it can be
> formalized and the discussion closed, I too would ask everyone to review
> what's listed there, and discuss here. There are several unresolved
> questions there which need to be answered.
>
> At least I hope with g.message and G_*message() we have all the tools we
> need now? My only gripe with G_message() is that it makes it impossible
> to use whitespace formatting as it drops \n and \t and leading spaces
> and compresses inline multiple spaces. But maybe that is good, as doing
> that will not work well with dynamic-width fonts, ie it makes GUI output
> ugly between lines, and tables should go to fprintf(stdout,..).
>
>
> It saves more work later to get this right the first time :) and kills
> motivation on all sides to have to revert changes later :(
>
>
> Hamish
>   
As I continue translating I find a lot messages that are affected by 
what is being discussed in this topic and it's a bit frustrating. I can 
leave messages untranslated, and so I will have to go back to them 
later, or I can translate them in the way proposed, with the risk of 
having to change them later if proposal are changed, while it would be 
easy for me to change messages in the moment if any agreement is reached.
I would like to reduce this situation if possible, so I propose to split 
discussion by items listed in wiki and try to get an agreement at least 
in those easier. We could add votes under each item in wiki and finally 
take a decision and mark item as accepted.
E.g.:
* First letter should be capitalized
+1 Carlos
* Use the present tense (cannot instead of could not; *better: unable to*)
+1 Carlos
and so on

What do you think about this?

Carlos