[Aptitude-devel] Improving error messages given to users when parsing grouping policies

[Daniel Hartwig]

On 27 February 2012 17:59, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo
<manuel.montezelo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2012/2/27 Daniel Hartwig <mandyke at gmail.com>:
>> Hello again,
>>
>> Much quicker comment this time ;-)
>>
>>
>> -- src/load_grouppolicy.cc
>> -      throw GroupParseException(_("By-mode grouping policies take no
>> arguments"));
>> +      throw GroupParseException(_("'action' grouping policy takes no
>> arguments"));
>>                                    ^^
>> --
>>
>> Not using a capital for the first letter on these messages?
>>
>> Also, are the single-quotes needed?
>
> Single quotes to remark that "action" is a keyword, the same reason
> why I quoted it again now, people usually do that when using a
> "meta-language".  I've used it consistently in all of the messages.

Ok.  This usage is actually very common.

> And since the leading word is a keyword, I don't think that it's
> appropriate to use capital letters.
>

As these keywords are not case-sensitive it is fine to capitalize them
in order to maintain consistency with other error messages.  If you
are cautious about this kind of thing it is always possible to
restructure the sentence so that the lowercase word does not appear at
the start:

  "An 'action' grouping policy takes no arguments."
  "Grouping policy 'action' takes no arguments."

are just as valid.

> Additionally, I think that the bug report made complete sense and that
> using strange wording and internal name that aptitude has been using
> for years for these error messages is fundamentally wrong.  So IMO
> overall the changed text is actually much more informative and an
> improvement.

I agree also with this.  Just nit-picking at the capitalization ;-)