New pkg-message[.in] guideline idea

[David DEMELIER]

2010/6/23 Janne Snabb <snabb at epipe.com>:
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2010, David DEMELIER wrote:
>
>> I would do something like this to the FreeBSD ports, if you agree with
>> me I can check every messages and modify them. I can also put
>> something in the FreeBSD porter's handbook to write a "pkg-message
>> template"
>
> I find it completely useless and plainly stupid to edit the
> pkg-messages of all ports to include lots of equal signs for tty-based
> formatting purposes. In my opinion the messages in the ports tree
> should contain (English language, word based) messages, and if some
> visual formatting is desired, it should be done by the upper layer
> which displays the message (such as the ports framework, a web site
> which displays information about various ports, or whatever).
>

We can take a long time to do that (we don't have to do it quickly),
but it could be useful to standardize it for one reason :
You will see that it's a message from the port maintainer/submitter
and not from the program itself! Sometimes configure scripts stage say
some useless things to the user.

> The more clueful web monkeys have known to separate content from
> visual formatting for several years, why should FreeBSD make the
> same mistake the web monkeys did when www first became popular?
>
> However I fully support the idea that all the relevant messages
> should be displayed at the end of a build/upgrade process whenever
> technically feasible (otherwise they will just fly past while I am
> having a lunch or whatever). If the boild/upgrade process fails in
> the middle, the messages of successful builds/upgrades should still
> be displayed, even though the end of the process has not been
> reached.
>

I agree too.

-- 
Demelier David