Re: final batch of tiny string fixes [patches]

[Benno Schulenberg]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> > -              ngettext ("WARNING: %" PRIuMAX " of %" PRIuMAX
> > -                        " listed file could not be read",
> > +              ngettext ("WARNING: %" PRIuMAX " file could not be read",
> ...
> Ok, but rather, how about rewording it to retain the total number
> of files considered.  That can be important information.  Imagine
> the user thinks she is verifying the checksums of 10 files when
> in fact only 9 input lines are valid.  Omitting the "9" could be
> fatally misleading.

Hmm...  But in general it is unlikely that the user knows how many 
files should be verified.  For small numbers, okay, but not for 
tens or hundreds.  More importantly, though, this summary line only 
gets printed when one or more checksums do not match, so the user 
will not be alerted to too few files being verified (if she knows 
the total) when all valid lines verify OK.  If she wants to be 
alerted to misformatted lines, she should use -w.  But when 
verifying lots of files, any such error message will probably 
scroll quickly off the screen, so instead of mentioning the total 
number of checked files, it would be more useful to add another 
summary line that mentions the total number of improperly formatted 
lines.  This line should probably be printed before the summary of 
checksum mismatches, and probably only when -w is used.

> > -   printf (" %19s", "        ???");
> > +   /* TRANSLATORS: Real name is unknown; at most 19 characters.
> > */ +        printf (" %19s", _("        ???"));
> ...
> Why bother translating these in the first place?

For symmetry, because in print_long_entry() it is gettextized too.  
And because some languages may have a special word or character or 
designation for "unknown name", "unknown person", "unknown thing".  
Or some translators may simply prefer to use a clearer message 
than "        ???".

> I would welcome a patch that unifies and (if possible) then
> factors out some of the duplication displayed by this command:
>
>     grep -E 'MB? =?10..\*10' src/*.c

Okay.  But I won't have time to make this: in a few days I will 
break camp.  So this will probably be my last message to this list, 
not counting the upcoming pings.

Benno