Re: [PATCH 1/2] advice: extract function to print messages with prefix

Ralf Thielow [off-list ref] writes:

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 10:52 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Ralf Thielow [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

quoted

-             fprintf(stderr, _("hint: %.*s\n"), (int)(np - cp), cp);
+             fprintf(stderr,  "%s %.*s\n", prefix, (int)(np - cp), cp);

Hrm, naively, printf("%s: %.*s\n", _("hint"), ...) might look more
natural, but I vaguely recall that the current code places _()
around the entire "hint: %.*s\n" on purpose.  IIRC, it was to allow
translations that flow from RTL e.g. ".siht od t'nod :tnih".

Doesn't this patch break it?

Sorry but I don't know what you mean with "translations that flow
from RTL e.g. ".siht od t'nod :tnih"." so I can't check this.
As far as I can see the callers only put a simple message in it,
e.g. advise(_("Commit your changes or stash them to proceed."));
So I don't think that this patch would break anything.

Your patch would not allow target languages that want to put the
_("hint") at the *tail* end of each line of the message.  With the
original, with something like this:

        msgid "hint: %.*s\n"
        msgstr "%.*s :tnih\n"

you could do that if you wanted to.

Is there a need actually?
It's easy to add a "_(...)" around this string, but then we'll have a
msgid in "git.pot" without ever having a sensible translation. Not?

As I said "vaguely recall", even though I don't have a first-hand
experience in such a language, I know I was talked into doing it
this way when we did 23cb5bf (i18n of multi-line advice messages,