Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] Unification of user message strings

From: Vincent van Ravesteijn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:16:25 +0100

>> From: Vincent van Ravesteijn<[email-masked]>
>>
>> Rewrite user messages to stick to a uniform style for all messages. From the surrounding code, the following guidelines were deduced:
>> - messages start with a capital,
>> - short messages do not end with a full stop,
>> - paths, filenames, and commands are quoted by single quotes (if not separated by the normal text by a ':'),
>> - 'could not' is used rather than 'cannot'.
>>
>>
>> @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ int sign_buffer(struct strbuf *buffer, struct strbuf *signature, const char *sig
>>   	args[3] = NULL;
>>
>>   	if (start_command(&gpg))
>> -		return error(_("could not run gpg."));
>> +		return error(_("Could not run 'gpg'"));
> Ok with s/c/C/, but I am not sure about the 'gpg' bit.  The name of the
> program and path to it can be configured so the user may be expecting to
> run a program called gnupg, and unquoted gpg feels more like a generic
> term to refer to the program.  It might be worth using all-CAPS, though.

Yes, all-CAPS seems the better alternative.

>> -		return error(_("cannot open %s: %s"), filename,
>> +		return error(_("Could not open '%s': %s"), filename,
> Honestly speaking, I would personally prefer "Cannot open" over "Could not
> open".  Yes, all the error messages report _after_ we attempted to do
> something and finding that we _couldn't_ do that thing, so "Could not" may
> be technically more correct, but still...
>
> But that is probably just me.
>

No it's not you, grep tells me "Cannot" is indeed the most occuring, 
except in sequencer.c (which I stumbled on first).

> Other than that, the patch looks good; let's hear from others, too.

Ok, let's hear other comments, and then I will send a reroll to fix up 
the things above.

Vincent