[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#171177: Back on debconf templates wording

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 10:13:51AM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> _Description: Workgroup/Domain Name:
>  Please specify the workgroup you want this server to appear to be in
>  when queried by clients. Note that this parameter also controls the
>  domain name used with the security=domain setting.

> Into that:

> _Description: Workgroup/Domain Name:
>  Please specify the workgroup for this system.  This setting controls which
>  workgroup the system will appear in when used as a server, the default
>  workgroup to be used when browsing with various frontends, and the domain
>  name used with the 'security=domain' setting.

> (I changed 'your' in 'the' in Steve's proposal and I added quotes
> around the proposed setting. Rétionale for first proposal: the system
> is maybe not "mine" but a big server from my company)

I continue to object most vehemently to this "sanitizing" of debconf
templates to eliminate the second person.  As a native English speaker I
find this form of writing altogether contrived.  It is every bit as valid to
speak of "your" system as it is to speak of a person missing "their" bus,
which they also don't own - your rationale is entirely bogus in English, and
I really wish you would restrict this campaign to the French translations.

I'm not going to revert the change because this particular substitution
doesn't sound quite as artificial as some - but it does sound marginally
worse to me in English compared with the earlier version with second person
intact.

Separately, we ought to be using double quotes instead of single quotes
around "security=domain"; the use of single quotes is an artifact of
computer programming languages which use single quotes to denote literals,
and isn't really correct style when addressing users.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org