svn commit: trunk/busybox: archival libbb

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Wed Sep 13 15:48:21 UTC 2006


On Wednesday 13 September 2006 5:57 am, Denis Vlasenko wrote:
> If we want consistency, then obvoiusly non-capitalized
> version is more correct wrt English language.

If we want consistency, whatever we were doing more of when you started would 
have been the logical choice (and I think that was capitalization).  I 
actually liked the capitalization after the colon because it made the 
interesting bit of the message stand out a bit more.

> > > This sure is correct, but in my opinion is not worth the effort...
> > > and to be the biggest of "nitpickers" i would suggest to add a dot "."
> > > at the end of every sentence increasing the size of bb a few  Kb.
> > 
> > No.
> 
> "No" seconded. When size matters, I pick smaller.
> For example, "couldn't" can usually be replaced by "can't"...

True, but:

fdisk.c:                _("\n\tThere is a valid AIX label on this disk.\n"
fdisk.c:                "\tUnfortunately Linux cannot handle these\n"
fdisk.c:                "\tdisks at the moment.  Nevertheless some\n"
fdisk.c:                "\tadvice:\n"
fdisk.c:                "\t1. fdisk will destroy its contents on write.\n"
fdisk.c:                "\t2. Be sure that this disk is NOT a still vital\n"
fdisk.c:                "\t   part of a volume group. (Otherwise you may\n"
fdisk.c:                "\t   erase the other disks as well, if 
unmirrored.)\n"
fdisk.c:                "\t3. Before deleting this physical volume be sure\n"
fdisk.c:                "\t   to remove the disk logically from your AIX\n"
fdisk.c:                "\t   machine.  (Otherwise you become an AIXpert).")

(P.S. Don't bother, that entire applet is on my "rewrite from scratch" list 
after e2fsprogs and the passwd infrastructure.  I'm throwing the old one 
_out_, writing out a structure so simple it fits entirely in the boot sector 
should not be a major production.)

> I think the good decision would be:
> 
> 1) error_msg() message text should not be capitalized,
>    but existing code should not be massively fixed, can be
>    done gradually while fixing/rewriting nearby code.
> 
> 2) Period at the end of one-sentence messages should be avoided
>    for size reasons. (Multi-sentence messages may have
>    trailing period)
> 
> Is it okay with you Rob?

It's a little more nitpicky than I usually try to deal with, but this is an 
area where somebody cares sufficiently more than I do that I should probably 
stay out of their way.

(And to be honest, correct capitalization's always been something I suck at.  
I am quite capable of preferring an incorrect capitalization, and probably 
shouldn't enforce that on the project over the objections of others. :)

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.



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