OpenEuphoria

1. Program's bad English

• Posted by SDPringle Aug 17, 2008
• 899 views

One thing I have noticed in the last few years is programs that make a lot of ugly use of English:

For example: 'translate T_TEXT.E' and then it translates. It should read: 'translating T_TEXT.E' or 'I am translating T_TEXT.E' or 'I will now translate T_TEXT.E'. Is there a compelling reason to use the infinitive form here?

Shawn Pringle

3. Re: Program's bad English

• Posted by SDPringle Aug 21, 2008
• 863 views

That is exactly what I am talking about. Programs should issue messages in away that shows more mastery of English than has Grimlock (See TransFormers Movie [original cartoon version] if you don't remember who I am talking about)

Compare: Getting the Fruit Loops...done Getting the bowl...done Getting the milk...done Pouring the cerealthis may take several minutes...done Pouring the milk...

to:

Get Fruit Loops Get bowl Get milk Pour Cereal pour milk

Now, either one could be an output to the console or a sequence of strings to be outputed into a status bar. I know the first example looks like a configure script output. Or it might remind you of what scandisk shows you. The second example is of the form I see when using OpenOffice and eutest.ex

Right now I see: 'translate t_database:' It would be better if it read: 'translating t_database.e to C' or even 'will now translate t_database.e to C.'

Shawn Pringle

5. Re: Program's bad English

• Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Aug 21, 2008
• 868 views

Just kidding ... there is nothing really to 'fix'.

Look, if this particular program was a significant one, and that the message was actually important, I might get around to improving the message text during the next time we fixed an actual bug in the program. But right now, it is a trivial issue. If you insist that we 'fix' this, please submit a Support Request ...

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=182827&atid=902783