From: Vincent van Ravesteijn Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:16:25 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] Unification of user message strings Message-ID: <4F679419.8020204@lyx.org> In-Reply-To: <7v1uoobcsv.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> >> From: Vincent van Ravesteijn >> >> Rewrite user messages to stick to a uniform style for all messages. From the surrounding code, the following guidelines were deduced: >> - messages start with a capital, >> - short messages do not end with a full stop, >> - paths, filenames, and commands are quoted by single quotes (if not separated by the normal text by a ':'), >> - 'could not' is used rather than 'cannot'. >> >> >> @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ int sign_buffer(struct strbuf *buffer, struct strbuf *signature, const char *sig >> args[3] = NULL; >> >> if (start_command(&gpg)) >> - return error(_("could not run gpg.")); >> + return error(_("Could not run 'gpg'")); > Ok with s/c/C/, but I am not sure about the 'gpg' bit. The name of the > program and path to it can be configured so the user may be expecting to > run a program called gnupg, and unquoted gpg feels more like a generic > term to refer to the program. It might be worth using all-CAPS, though. Yes, all-CAPS seems the better alternative. >> - return error(_("cannot open %s: %s"), filename, >> + return error(_("Could not open '%s': %s"), filename, > Honestly speaking, I would personally prefer "Cannot open" over "Could not > open". Yes, all the error messages report _after_ we attempted to do > something and finding that we _couldn't_ do that thing, so "Could not" may > be technically more correct, but still... > > But that is probably just me. > No it's not you, grep tells me "Cannot" is indeed the most occuring, except in sequencer.c (which I stumbled on first). > Other than that, the patch looks good; let's hear from others, too. Ok, let's hear other comments, and then I will send a reroll to fix up the things above. Vincent