Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 14:07:26 -0500 From: "Michael C . Wu" <keichii@iteration.net> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> Cc: i18n@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I18N Progress, Plans, and Proposals Message-ID: <20001020140726.B39526@peorth.iteration.net> In-Reply-To: <72695.971986572@winston.osd.bsdi.com>; from jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com on Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 01:16:12PM -0700 References: <keichii@iteration.net> <72695.971986572@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
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On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 01:16:12PM -0700, Jordan Hubbard scribbled: | > The advantages are : | > A. Easy bug reporting by users. (e.g. "I have error 2398423") | > B. I18N error messages | | Let me just say, as someone who's done "escalation tech support" for | major ISVs (the people who get called whenever front-line tech support | is confronted with a "I have error 2398423" question), that this can | also be a tremendous pain in the butt when done wrong. The format I have in mind is more like: kern.pci.cardbus.insert.ed0 kern.net.tcpip.route.not-responding.gateway.123.233.233.100 kern.pci.pcm.yamaha.ptr.mem.0xfedf8000.irq9.device.9.on-pci0 | Done wrong, a message catalog-using program will emit cryptic numeric | errors whenever a message catalog file cannot be found or is | corrupted. Done right, the program is written in such a way as to | contain a default message which can also be overridden from the | message catalog file if some different text is found in the | appropriate language. I believe this is the way that catgets(3) | currently works, but you'd be amazed how many programmers just skip | providing a default message since the appropriate message catalog is | always found on *their* system. | | There's also nothing more unreadable than code which tests a failure | condition and then calls a message catalog routine with some numeric | constant, the actual text of the error message being an aid to the | programmer as well as the user when reading someone else's code and | trying to figure out what varioups parts of it are trying to do. So can we output the message catalogue name along with the plaintext message? -- +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | keichii@peorth.iteration.net | keichii@bsdconspiracy.net | | http://peorth.iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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