Re: [patch] info: error messages in echo area want a period

[Gavin Smith]

On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 01:02:18PM +0200, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> 
> On Sat, May 13, 2017, at 14:58, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 01:36:00PM +0200, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> > > Most messages in the echo area about "impossible" user commands
> > > end in a period.  But not all of them.  Attached patch adds the
> > > missing period to some of those.  I didn't do an exhaustive search,
> > > so probably there are other such missing dots in other files.
> > 
> > They should not end in a period according to the GNU Coding Standards.
> > I will try to remove them.
> 
> No no no no no!
> 
> Oh crap, you already removed them.  :|  You had something nice --
> something distinctive -- and turned it into mush.  :|

I couldn't find any discussion online of why the recommendation was
made.  You can make arguments either way but ultimately it is a question
of taste.  I checked Emacs Info as well and it omits the periods too.
There is the same recommendation in the Emacs Lisp manual
(in (elisp)Signaling Errors or 
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Signaling-Errors.html).

"The convention in Emacs Lisp is that error messages should start with a 
capital letter, but should not end with any sort of punctuation."

Thus, I think it's better to be consistent with other GNU software.

> I guess you are referring to the last sentence on this page:
>   https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Errors.html

Yes.

> But I think the main reason for not letting error messages end
> with a period is that sometimes they are followed by a colon
> plus another explanatory message.
> 
> But the messages we are talking about here (most of them, at
> least), are not such error messages.  They aren't even error
> messages, they are just helpful hints for the user, about
> reaching the end of the document, or there being no next node
> on this level.

It's not just error messages: "Error messages from interactive programs, 
and other messages such as usage messages, should start with a capital 
letter."

> It was nice to see that info spoke in polite,
> full sentences: starting with a capital and ending with a full
> stop.  And now it is back to bad, improper orthography.  :(

Somewhat off topic, but this reminds me of a recent news story:

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/01/is-there-really-a-grammatical-error-on-the-new-five-pound-note-6608790/

> (By the way, you missed one, in indices.c, line 478.)

Thanks, hhanged for consistency.