From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263983AbTDJB1N (for ); Wed, 9 Apr 2003 21:27:13 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263986AbTDJB1N (for ); Wed, 9 Apr 2003 21:27:13 -0400 Received: from chaos.analogic.com ([204.178.40.224]:28806 "EHLO chaos.analogic.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263983AbTDJB1M (for ); Wed, 9 Apr 2003 21:27:12 -0400 Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 21:43:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "Richard B. Johnson" X-X-Sender: root@chaos Reply-To: root@chaos.analogic.com To: Frank Davis cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: kernel support for non-english user messages In-Reply-To: <3E94A1B4.6020602@si.rr.com> Message-ID: References: <3E93A958.80107@si.rr.com> <20030409080803.GC29167@mea-ext.zmailer.org> <20030409080803.GC29167@mea-ext.zmailer.org> <20030409190700.H19288@almesberger.net> <3E94A1B4.6020602@si.rr.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Frank Davis wrote: > How about unifying the printk text messages into a limited set of > common/canned text statements? If that could be done, all that would be > needed in the kernel would be a small language translation table. The > output of the table, based on the english input and the user's language > setting, would be sent to the administrator/user. > > On a similar note, Andreas Dilger mentioned this suggestion earlier, > which it seems has been echoed by others, and that might be agreeable... [SNIPPED...] > > Granted, you can have multi-level messages (like the VMS-style > > %facility-severity-ident), but that only buys some time. And you > > still either need a message catalog or include the plain text in > > the message as well. > > No. VAX/VMS is dead. It got killed by things like that. Canned strings that required valuable resources. You don't need any of that. You need to use the kernel logging facility for the three or four messages that a properly running system will issue in its lifetime (like the file-system getting full). There are too many damn strings in the kernel already. Making them somehow legitimate is the wrong approach. If there are so many error messages that we need a translation service, then there are too many error messages, either because there are too many errors, or because of the propensity of 'coders' (as opposed to software engineers) to "print" every *%&$#@&#%_ thing that they don't understand. Don't get me started, but when was it decided that you should "print" everything that went okay? I saw during the past month that somebody wanted to increase the size of the kernel message ring buffer because they were losing "important" data. They should fix the errors first before making new errors. Then, you don't even need printk(). If they are printing "good" stuff from the kernel, then the kernel message facility is being abused. Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.