Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (16/05/2006):
> On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 01:11:01AM +0200, Thomas Huriaux wrote:
> > It shouldn't be a sentence, it should be a real prompt.
>
> No, I disagree.
>
> A prompt is a short sequence of characters which informs the user that
> the computer is ready to accept commands. "READY\n" on my old C64.
> "C:\>" on legacy systems. "$" on old UNIX systems, or
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ " on modern ones. Or, according to wordnet:
>
> 2: (computer science) a symbol that appears on the computer
> screen to indicate that the computer is ready to receive a
> command [syn: {command prompt}]
>
> What you're talking about are not prompts; they are input fields with
> descriptive labels.
>
> Now while some input fields and methods for requesting input make sense
> with terse descriptions, others most definately do not. Some
> character-based applications without scrolling abilities (debconf most
> certainly does not fit that description) have no choice but to keep
> input field descriptions terse, lest they run out of screen space.
> Everything else should not do that.
>
> Indeed, the question of whether a description should be terse or long
> also depends on the medium. Debconf questions and/or templates shouldn't
> be terse; they should be a bit verbose. You agree with that; otherwise,
> you'd have suggested me to use "Action for ${level}:" rather than the
> above.
>
> Personally, I don't think it makes sense to ask information from the
> user with half sentences. Apart from the fact that it's not
> grammatically correct to do so, it's also pretty rude.As you said, this is your personal opinion. > > Most common examples are > > login: > > password: > > I think you agree with me that a simple "password:" prompt is better > > than "Enter your password:" or "What is your password?". > > Sorry, no, I do not agree that "password:" is a better way to ask for a > password than "Enter your password:" or "What is your password?", as the > latter two give more information; the phrase "Enter your password" makes > it clear to the user that they should enter a password that they already > have. Using an input field description like "What is your password?" or, > better yet, "What password do you want?", OTOH, could request for the > user to _invent_ a password. > > Both could be asked with a "password:" description; but that isn't as > clear. You are not taking in account: - the contextual information: a debconf screen stopping the installation process with a "password:" prompt (or input field, as you prefer, it is only a matter of interpretation) make it obvious for the user that he/she has to enter something. - the long description, that should explain what will occurr if the user doesn't type anything, types a wrong password, etc. The short description is not there to contain all the contextual and extended information. > > Also note that the intention is not to force maintainers to find > > workarounds to avoid lintian warnings, but to improve the debconf > > consistency, by having similar styles in similar situations. > > It is my experience and opinion that in a project as large as Debian, > which has twice as many opinions as there are people participating (or > so), achieving "consistency" is an impossible goal. I'm a bit disappointed by this statement. Having diversity does not mean that we can't try to unify some parts of the system. With this position, you are obsoleting every kind of guidelines, best-practice guides, etc. However, this issue is not so important, so I will no longer argue. Cheers, -- Thomas Huriaux
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