Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 13:16:12 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> To: "Michael C . Wu" <keichii@peorth.iteration.net> Cc: i18n@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I18N Progress, Plans, and Proposals Message-ID: <72695.971986572@winston.osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: Message from "Michael C . Wu" <keichii@iteration.net> of "Thu, 19 Oct 2000 03:32:53 CDT." <20001019033252.A31416@peorth.iteration.net>
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> The advantages are : > A. Easy bug reporting by users. (e.g. "I have error 2398423") > B. I18N error messages Let me just say, as someone who's done "escalation tech support" for major ISVs (the people who get called whenever front-line tech support is confronted with a "I have error 2398423" question), that this can also be a tremendous pain in the butt when done wrong. Done wrong, a message catalog-using program will emit cryptic numeric errors whenever a message catalog file cannot be found or is corrupted. Done right, the program is written in such a way as to contain a default message which can also be overridden from the message catalog file if some different text is found in the appropriate language. I believe this is the way that catgets(3) currently works, but you'd be amazed how many programmers just skip providing a default message since the appropriate message catalog is always found on *their* system. There's also nothing more unreadable than code which tests a failure condition and then calls a message catalog routine with some numeric constant, the actual text of the error message being an aid to the programmer as well as the user when reading someone else's code and trying to figure out what varioups parts of it are trying to do. This isn't meant as a general criticism of your points at all, just a cautionary note. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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