Re: [RFC PATCH 2/3] usage: prefix all lines in `vreportf()`, not just the first

From: Martin Ågren <martin.agren@gmail.com>
Date: May 29, 2018, 04:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CAN0heSq1y3XibCFDYsae5b6jmzZOzcLHT4atCZ+KCb4dL5As0g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq8t83ihd7.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

On 28 May 2018 at 23:45, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

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> Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>>> +error:       sub/added
>>>> +error:       sub/addedtoo
>>>> +error: Please move or remove them before you switch branches.
>>>>  Aborting
>>>>  EOF
>>>
>>> This shows the typical effect of this series, which (I subjectively
>>> think) gives us a more pleasant end-user experience.
>>
>> Also, very subjectively, I'm torn about this. To me, just one
>> "error/warning/fatal" at the start of the first paragraph feels much
>> better. If we have to somehow mark the second paragraph that "this is
>> also part of the error message" then it's probably better to rephrase.

Would you feel the same about "hint: "? We already do prefix all the lines there. It seems to we we should probably do the same for "hint: " as for "warning: ", whatever we decide is right.

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> I personally can go either way.  If you prefer less noisy route, we
> could change the function signature of vreportf() to take a prefix
> for the first line and another prefix for the remaining lines and
> pass that through down to the "split and print with prefix" helper.
>
> That way, we can
>
>  - allow callers to align 1st prefix (e.g. "error: ") with the
>    leading indent for the second and subsequent lines by passing the
>    second prefix with appropriate display width.

I suspect this second prefix would always consist of strlen(first_prefix) spaces? We should be able to construct it on the fly, without any need for manual counting and human mistakes.

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>
>  - allow translators to grow or shrink number of lines a given
>    message takes, and to decide where in the translated string to
>    wrap lines.
>
> Even though step 3/3 may become a bit awkward (the second prefix
> would most likely be only whitespace, and you'd need to write
> something silly like _("\t")), we can still keep the alignment if we
> wanted to.

Thanks both for your comments. I'll see what I can come up with.

Martin