GNU bug report logs - #15054
df: "block" is not a French(+) word

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Message #8 received at 15054 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Filipus Klutiero <chealer <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 15054 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#15054: df: "block" is not a French(+) word
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 05:24:47 +0100

On 08/09/2013 04:54 AM, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
> My df outputs something like:
>> Sys. de fichiers blocks de 1K  Utilisé Disponible Uti% Monté sur
>> /dev/sda5            37534240 24181584   11439364  68% /
>> udev                    10240        0      10240   0% /dev
>> tmpfs                  756064      572     755492   1% /run
>> tmpfs                    5120        0       5120   0% /run/lock
>> tmpfs                 1845740        4    1845736   1% /run/shm
>> /dev/sdc3            20641788 16697020    2896128  86% /mnt/work
> 
> In English, the header would be:
>> Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
> 
> So "1K-blocks" is translated to "blocks de 1K". It turns out that this isn't a problem in the po file:
> 
>> #. TRANSLATORS: this is the "1K-blocks" header in "df" output.
>> #. TRANSLATORS: this is the "1024-blocks" header in "df -P".
>> #: src/df.c:545 src/df.c:554
>> #, c-format
>> msgid "%s-%s"
>> msgstr "%2$s de %1$s"
> 
> The po file does its best given the msgid given, but it's not given the opportunity to translate "block" itself, which is "bloc" in French. For French, this simply looks like a typo/translato. In Spanish and many other languages, this must be more striking.
> 
> I believe this can be fixed by calling gettext with a string built using a string already translated by gettext.
> 

This might fix it up:

diff --git a/src/df.c b/src/df.c
index c2c390e..949fe2f 100644
--- a/src/df.c
+++ b/src/df.c
@@ -539,7 +539,7 @@ get_header (void)
           char *num = human_readable (output_block_size, buf, opts, 1, 1);

           /* Reset the header back to the default in OUTPUT_MODE.  */
-          header = N_("blocks");
+          header = _("blocks");

           /* TRANSLATORS: this is the "1K-blocks" header in "df" output.  */
           if (asprintf (&cell, _("%s-%s"), num, header) == -1)

> A very different approach would be to reconsider the "block" terminology in df. 1K here is not a block size in the technical sense, it's merely the display unit. When run with --human-readable, there is no need to put unit information in the header, as each cell indicates the unit. Instead of displaying the unit, the header then reads "Size". Which makes you realize that this header actually applies to the 3 size columns.
>
> So enabling human-readable by default would fix this. I thought the disadvantage was verbosity, but human-readable balances verbosity and precision very well and is actually shorter. So the only disadvantage is the generally smaller precision. Even for the precise/fixed-unit mode, at least in French, displaying the unit in each cell would still be more compact than the current approach on my system.
>

Yes this could do with some improvement.
POSIX says -P should output 1024-blocks but doesn't mention translations
The 1K-blocks was a minimal width equivalent, though 1K is ambiguous (1000 or 1024?)

Also there is awkwardness with -B:

$ df -B1K
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                13102208  11726468   1242672  91% /

$ df -BK
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs               13102208K 11726468K  1242672K  91% /

It would be good to clean this up a bit.

thanks,
Pádraig.

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