[patch] for "Mistakes in messages" reported by Petr Pisar

[patch] for "Mistakes in messages" reported by Petr Pisar

[Benno Schulenberg]

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Hi,

Attached patch fixes most of the issues reported by Petr Pisar a
week ago.  (Cannot follow up to his message; I wasn't subscribed.)

Some of the things he reported were already fixed, and one thing
is not an error, I think: "Partition overlap on the disk." -- here the
word "Partition" is an adjective and "overlap" a noun.  "Partitions
overlap on the disk." doesn't make it any clearer, in my opinion.

Regards,

Benno

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                          unladen european swallow


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From fe35071256e0bd55da2c16b269d6e225c794e420 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 21:58:13 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] textual: improve clarity of some error messages
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Reported-by: Petr Písař <petr.pisar@atlas.cz>
Signed-off-by: Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net>
---
 disk-utils/mkfs.cramfs.c |    6 +++---
 disk-utils/mkfs.minix.c  |    2 +-
 login-utils/sulogin.c    |    6 +++---
 misc-utils/findmnt.c     |    2 +-
 sys-utils/losetup.c      |    6 +++---
 5 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/disk-utils/mkfs.cramfs.c b/disk-utils/mkfs.cramfs.c
index 23dcfef..fdc2cae 100644
--- a/disk-utils/mkfs.cramfs.c
+++ b/disk-utils/mkfs.cramfs.c
@@ -736,7 +736,7 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)
 			opt_errors = 1;
 			break;
 		case 'e':
-			opt_edition = strtou32_or_err(optarg, _("edition number argument failed"));
+			opt_edition = strtou32_or_err(optarg, _("invalid edition number argument"));
 			break;
 		case 'N':
 			if (strcmp(optarg, "big") == 0)
@@ -746,8 +746,8 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)
 			else if (strcmp(optarg, "host") == 0)
 				/* default */ ;
 			else
-				errx(MKFS_EX_USAGE, _("invalid endianness given."
-						   " Must be 'big', 'little', or 'host'"));
+				errx(MKFS_EX_USAGE, _("invalid endianness given;"
+						   " must be 'big', 'little', or 'host'"));
 			break;
 		case 'i':
 			opt_image = optarg;
diff --git a/disk-utils/mkfs.minix.c b/disk-utils/mkfs.minix.c
index 3a1617b..639ace7 100644
--- a/disk-utils/mkfs.minix.c
+++ b/disk-utils/mkfs.minix.c
@@ -482,7 +482,7 @@ static void setup_tables(void) {
 
 	super_block_buffer = calloc(1, MINIX_BLOCK_SIZE);
 	if (!super_block_buffer)
-		err(MKFS_EX_ERROR, _("%s: unable to alloc buffer for superblock"),
+		err(MKFS_EX_ERROR, _("%s: unable to allocate buffer for superblock"),
 				device_name);
 
 	memset(boot_block_buffer,0,512);
diff --git a/login-utils/sulogin.c b/login-utils/sulogin.c
index 32ae9a2..352c781 100644
--- a/login-utils/sulogin.c
+++ b/login-utils/sulogin.c
@@ -484,13 +484,13 @@ static void doprompt(const char *crypted, struct console *con)
 	if (crypted[0])
 		fprintf(con->file, _("Give root password for login: "));
 	else
-		fprintf(con->file, _("Press enter for login: "));
+		fprintf(con->file, _("Press Enter for login: "));
 #else
 	if (crypted[0])
 		fprintf(con->file, _("Give root password for maintenance\n"));
 	else
-		fprintf(con->file, _("Press enter for maintenance"));
-	fprintf(con->file, _("(or type Control-D to continue): "));
+		fprintf(con->file, _("Press Enter for maintenance"));
+	fprintf(con->file, _("(or press Control-D to continue): "));
 #endif
 	fflush(con->file);
 err:
diff --git a/misc-utils/findmnt.c b/misc-utils/findmnt.c
index 4a3e760..48c807c 100644
--- a/misc-utils/findmnt.c
+++ b/misc-utils/findmnt.c
@@ -133,7 +133,7 @@ static struct colinfo infos[FINDMNT_NCOLUMNS] = {
 	[COL_ID]           = { "ID",              2, TT_FL_RIGHT, N_("mount ID") },
 	[COL_OPT_FIELDS]   = { "OPT-FIELDS",   0.10, TT_FL_TRUNC, N_("optional mount fields") },
 	[COL_PROPAGATION]  = { "PROPAGATION",  0.10, 0, N_("VFS propagation flags") },
-	[COL_FREQ]         = { "FREQ",            1, TT_FL_RIGHT, N_("dump(8) frequency in days [fstab only]") },
+	[COL_FREQ]         = { "FREQ",            1, TT_FL_RIGHT, N_("dump(8) period in days [fstab only]") },
 	[COL_PASSNO]       = { "PASSNO",          1, TT_FL_RIGHT, N_("pass number on parallel fsck(8) [fstab only]") }
 };
 
diff --git a/sys-utils/losetup.c b/sys-utils/losetup.c
index 90e75eb..68ff43c 100644
--- a/sys-utils/losetup.c
+++ b/sys-utils/losetup.c
@@ -396,11 +396,11 @@ static void warn_size(const char *filename, uint64_t size)
 	}
 
 	if (size < 512)
-		warnx(_("%s: warning: file smaller than 512 bytes, the loop device "
-			"maybe be useless or invisible for system tools."),
+		warnx(_("%s: Warning: file is smaller than 512 bytes; the loop device "
+			"may be useless or invisible for system tools."),
 			filename);
 	else if (size % 512)
-		warnx(_("%s: warning: file does not fit into a 512-byte sector "
+		warnx(_("%s: Warning: file does not fit into a 512-byte sector; "
 		        "the end of the file will be ignored."),
 			filename);
 }
-- 
1.7.0.4

Re: [patch] for "Mistakes in messages" reported by Petr Pisar

[Petr Pisar]

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On Wed, Jun 05, 2013 at 10:08:09PM +0200, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> 
> Some of the things he reported were already fixed, and one thing
> is not an error, I think: "Partition overlap on the disk." -- here the
> word "Partition" is an adjective and "overlap" a noun.  "Partitions
> overlap on the disk." doesn't make it any clearer, in my opinion.
> 
My English is terrible, but since when `partion' is an adjective
<http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=partition>?

My syntactical parser says:

Partitions[subject,noun,plural] overlap[predicate,verb] on the disk[adverbial,
adverb].

Your explanation is missing a predicate in the sentence.

-- Petr

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Re: [patch] for "Mistakes in messages" reported by Petr Pisar

[Benno Schulenberg]

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013, at 7:04, Petr Pisar wrote:
> My English is terrible, but since when `partion' is an adjective
> <http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=partition>?

Well, my knowledge of grammatical constructs is terrible, so whether
it's called an adjective or a compound noun or whatever, I don't know,
but I do know that English allows putting just about any word into any
role.  So even if the dictionary says it's a verb or a noun, it can be
employed as almost anything else too.  Can "table" be an adjective?
The above dictionary seems to say no, but Merriam Webster says sure.

  http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=table
  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/table

When table, why not partition too?

Also, error messages are often written in telegram style, mostly lacking
a verb: "Invalid argument", "No such directory", and so on.  The latter
is in my opinion short for: "There is no such directory".

Thus I understand "Partition overlap on the disk" to be a shortened form
of "There is partition overlap on the disk".

When "overlap" would be a verb, "Partitions overlap on the disk" doesn't
sound right.  It would be better as: "Some partitions on the disk overlap".

Which do you prefer?

Regards,

Benno

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http://www.fastmail.fm - A fast, anti-spam email service.

Re: [patch] for "Mistakes in messages" reported by Petr Pisar

[Karel Zak]

On Wed, Jun 05, 2013 at 10:08:09PM +0200, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> Some of the things he reported were already fixed, and one thing
> is not an error, I think: "Partition overlap on the disk." -- here the
> word "Partition" is an adjective and "overlap" a noun.  "Partitions
> overlap on the disk." doesn't make it any clearer, in my opinion.

 Applied, thanks.

-- 
 Karel Zak  <kzak@redhat.com>
 http://karelzak.blogspot.com