[Aptitude-devel] Unsplit strings in the main help message

[Christian Perrier]

As Deng Xiyue pointed, splitting strings in the help message is very
confusing for translators.

It is indeed very good that each option of aptitude's help message has
its own string but splitting long ones in several strings is much more
annoying.

I propose the attached patch. It might need to be rewritten for
readability, which explains why I did not commit it. I'm not expert
enough with C syntax to make this nicer..:-)



-- 


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--- main.cc	2008-04-12 13:43:22.669248060 +0200
+++ main.cc.new	2008-04-13 07:49:57.051305739 +0200
@@ -156,11 +156,8 @@
   printf(_(" changelog    - View a package's changelog\n"));
   printf(_(" download     - Download the .deb file for a package\n"));
   printf(_(" reinstall    - Download and (possibly) reinstall a currently installed package\n"));
-  printf(_(" why          - Show the manually installed packages that require a package, or\n"));
-  printf(_("              - why one or more packages would require the given package\n"));
-  printf(_(" why-not      - Show the manually installed packages that lead to a conflict\n"));
-  printf(_("                with the given package, or why one or more packages would\n"));
-  printf(_("                lead to a conflict with the given package if installed\n"));
+  printf(_(" why          - Show the manually installed packages that require a package, or\n                why one or more packages would require the given package\n"));
+  printf(_(" why-not      - Show the manually installed packages that lead to a conflict\n                with the given package, or why one or more packages would\n                lead to a conflict with the given package if installed\n"));
   printf("\n");
   printf(_("  Options:\n"));
   printf(_(" -h             This help text\n"));
@@ -177,8 +174,7 @@
   printf(_(" -Z             Show the change in installed size of each package.\n"));
   printf(_(" -v             Display extra information. (may be supplied multiple times)\n"));
   printf(_(" -t [release]   Set the release from which packages should be installed\n"));
-  printf(_(" -q             In command-line mode, suppress the incremental progress\n"));
-  printf(_("                indicators.\n"));
+  printf(_(" -q             In command-line mode, suppress the incremental progress\n                indicators.\n"));
   printf(_(" -o key=val     Directly set the configuration option named 'key'\n"));
   printf(_(" --with(out)-recommends	Specify whether or not to treat recommends as\n                strong dependencies\n"));
   printf(_(" -S fname       Read the aptitude extended status info from fname.\n"));
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