Ok, I need to ask an opinion here. The authors of the recent ifconfig
submission are from Japan (I think) but they're using longish english
error messages.
I've been trying to keep my error strings as concise as possible. A
chunk of examples from the current code turned up by a quick grep:
./lib/args.c: error_exit("Unknown option %s", gof->arg);
./lib/args.c: error_exit("No '%c' with '%c'", opt->c, bad->c);
./lib/lib.c: if (close(fd)) perror_exit("xclose");
./lib/lib.c: if (fd == -1) perror_exit("xdup");
./lib/lib.c: if (!f) perror_exit("No file %s", path);
./lib/lib.c: if (ret < 0) perror_exit("xread");
./lib/lib.c: if (len != readall(fd, buf, len)) perror_exit("xreadall");
./lib/lib.c: if (len != writeall(fd, buf, len)) perror_exit("xwrite");
./lib/lib.c: if (offset<0) perror_exit("lseek");
./lib/lib.c: if (!buf) perror_exit("xgetcwd");
./lib/lib.c: if(stat(path, st)) perror_exit("Can't stat %s", path);
./lib/lib.c: if (!new) perror_exit("realpath '%s'", path);
./lib/lib.c: if (chdir(path)) error_exit("chdir '%s'", path);
./lib/lib.c: if(rc) perror_exit("mkpath '%s'", path);
./lib/lib.c: if (setuid(uid)) perror_exit("xsetuid");
./lib/lib.c: if (*c) error_exit("not integer: %s", numstr);
The vast majority of those are the name of the function that failed (in
a perror_exit, followed by a presumably translated error string from
libc).
The reason I'm doing this is to be easier on non-english speakers.
Since I'm not translating toybox's messages, it doesn't seem reasonable
to expect non-english speakers to learn more than a few words to
understand toybox's various error messages.
But I don't know how helpful this actually is. I notice ifconfig using
descriptive error strings like:
Invalid Port Number '%s' Port Number should be in [1-65535] range
I'd have phrased that as "bad port %s (need 1-65535)" or something like
that. On the theory that people might be able to learn "bad" and
"need", especially if they're repeated often enough in the other error
messages. But "Invalid" is asking a lot more of a reader who may not
even be comfortable with the latin alphabet.
More or less I'm asking them to learn "bad", "need", "not", "unknown",
"no", and "can't". Then guess the rest from context. I can be a little
more lenient when it's perror_exit() instead of error_exit(), because
then a libc translated error message gets appended so 'nonsense
nonsense nonsense: "yourfilename": permission denied' is understandable
whatever the nonsense is, and if that's true I can skip the nonsense
entirely or just put "bad".
But I'm a native english speaker. I don't know if this is an effective
approach. Does anybody who ISN'T a native english speaker have an
opinion?
Rob
P.S. I'm not doing the gnu/dammit _("string") thing. This is a
self-contained multicall binary with no external dependencies, message
databases are an external dependency.)
P.P.S. I know I have to cleanup a lot of the external submissions. I'm
putting stuff in the "pending" directory these days to remind myself to
do this sort of thing. I need to do error message cleanup on
toys/posix/cut.c and toys/other/vmstat.c and toys/other/login.c. And
yes, this makes the english worse and the error messages less
expressive, but I have a _reason_. What I'm asking right now is whether
it's a good reason. (Sigh. Waaaay too much of what I'm doing here is
too darn subtle. I write giant web pages trying to explain stuff and
still don't cover topics like this...)
P.P.P.S. I'm aware that the help text doesn't get translated either.
But they already have localized versions of posix and such, there's
existing docs they can look at there and then see we support "-l",
"-p", and "-q"...
_______________________________________________
Toybox mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.landley.net/listinfo.cgi/toybox-landley.net
