[parted-devel] including author names in --version output

[Andrew Clausen]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 03:19:14PM +0100, Jim Meyering wrote:
> >> Not that this decision has anything to do with me...  if you want to
> >> maximize incentives for people to contribute, then you should fill the
> >> screen up with every contributor's name!
> >
> > Yes, I agree. I think this could be done using a variable on config.h
> > and parsing the AUTHORS file.
> 
> I've looked at that, and have encountered some problems.
> First, when there are 10 or more authors, gnulib's version-etc.c
> abbreviates the list, printing only the first nine:
> 
>   ...
>   Written by %s, %s, %s,\n%s, %s, %s, %s,\n%s, %s, and others.\n"),

Wouldn't it be better to do

	Written by %s

?

> while there are 44 names listed in AUTHORS.
> ----------------------------
> But that's not a big deal.
> I'll either fix the version_etc function to do what I want to use
> some other mechanism.
> 
> Another complication:
> the #define AUTHORS _("name1"), _("name2"), ...
> strings must be ASCII.

Can't they be UTF8?

If they can't, then it should be straightforward to generate a file
authors.h (eg by the configure script).

I don't think the translators would appreciate all the pollution in the message
catalogs.

> That's not a problem either, but now I'm wondering if we really
> want all 44 names in --version output.  Typically, the names listed
> there are those associated with "code" changes, not with translations.
> Many of the names in AUTHORS file are solely for translations.
> Maybe there should be a separate way to thank translators?
> 
> What do you think?

I suppose this only matters if you run out of screen space.

Cheers,
Andrew