On Mon 2018-07-30 20:58:02, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 04:58:49PM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > 
> > Way to poison the well by calling it VMS-style error reporting!  As I
> > understand it though, VMS reported errors in English with an error code
> > that could be looked up in The Wall of documentation.  I'd see David's
> > proposal as closer to plan9-style error reporting.
> 
> And I'm quite happy with David's proposal.  What I was trying to
> strongly argue against (and, yes, I was using some dirty pool when I
> called it VMS-style error reporting) was trying to do something more
> structured and more I18N friendly.
> 
> > But I think it has been a real problem.  I mean, look at ext4.
> > 
> >                 if (test_opt2(sb, EXPLICIT_DELALLOC)) {
> >                         ext4_msg(sb, KERN_ERR, "can't mount with "
> >                                  "both data=journal and delalloc");
> >                         goto failed_mount;
> > ...
> 
> ... and in practice it's not been a problem, because a *vanishingly*
> small number of users actually try to use the more advanced features
> of most file systems.  And those that do, can look at dmesg output,
> and they can darned will do it in English.
> 
> Doing returning something like %FSEXT4-E-NODJNLDELALLOC followed by
> English text, so that people who don't know English can look up

If you want to argue against proposal, you should select best form of
that proposal, not worst form.

> %FSEXT4-E-NODJNLDELALLOC in The Wall of 3-ring binders of
> documentation is just silly.  And saying we should remove all English
> text and returning the text string %FSEXT4-E-NODJNLDELALLOC so that
> people don't speak English aren't "disadvantaged" is even sillier.

You should really read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man,
"Steelmanning" section.

Proposal is "message %s foo %s\0param 1\0param2\0", only strings
allowed. That's simple enough, yet allows translations.

									Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html