On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 01:11:01AM +0200, Thomas Huriaux wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (16/05/2006):
> > On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 01:34:36PM +0200, Thomas Huriaux wrote:
> > > -_Description: What do you want the ${level} level of regular expressions
> > > to do?
> > > +_Description: Action to perform by the ${level} level of regular
> > > expressions:
> > >
> > > This was still not a prompt. With this rephrasing, you can remove the
> > > line
> > > logtool: malformed-prompt-in-templates logtool/map-level-to-file
> > > from the logtool.lintian-overrides file, as this won't be too long.
> >
> > It's not a full sentence, though. Sure, it's possible to rephrase
> > everything to use incorrect sentences, but that can't be the intention.
>
> It shouldn't be a sentence, it should be a real prompt.
No, I disagree.
A prompt is a short sequence of characters which informs the user that
the computer is ready to accept commands. "READY\n" on my old C64.
"C:\>" on legacy systems. "$" on old UNIX systems, or
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ " on modern ones. Or, according to wordnet:
2: (computer science) a symbol that appears on the computer
screen to indicate that the computer is ready to receive a
command [syn: {command prompt}]
What you're talking about are not prompts; they are input fields with
descriptive labels.
Now while some input fields and methods for requesting input make sense
with terse descriptions, others most definately do not. Some
character-based applications without scrolling abilities (debconf most
certainly does not fit that description) have no choice but to keep
input field descriptions terse, lest they run out of screen space.
Everything else should not do that.
Indeed, the question of whether a description should be terse or long
also depends on the medium. Debconf questions and/or templates shouldn't
be terse; they should be a bit verbose. You agree with that; otherwise,
you'd have suggested me to use "Action for ${level}:" rather than the
above.
Personally, I don't think it makes sense to ask information from the
user with half sentences. Apart from the fact that it's not
grammatically correct to do so, it's also pretty rude.
> Most common examples are
> login:
> password:
> I think you agree with me that a simple "password:" prompt is better
> than "Enter your password:" or "What is your password?".
Sorry, no, I do not agree that "password:" is a better way to ask for a
password than "Enter your password:" or "What is your password?", as the
latter two give more information; the phrase "Enter your password" makes
it clear to the user that they should enter a password that they already
have. Using an input field description like "What is your password?" or,
better yet, "What password do you want?", OTOH, could request for the
user to _invent_ a password.
Both could be asked with a "password:" description; but that isn't as
clear.
[...]
> Also note that the intention is not to force maintainers to find
> workarounds to avoid lintian warnings, but to improve the debconf
> consistency, by having similar styles in similar situations.
It is my experience and opinion that in a project as large as Debian,
which has twice as many opinions as there are people participating (or
so), achieving "consistency" is an impossible goal.
--
Fun will now commence
-- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
