HI-TECH Software Forums: Error, Warning, and Advisory messages

On a number of occasions we have seen users of our products misunderstand some of the messages which are displayed. In many cases this is because we've used words that have a particular technical meaning to those of us who spend all day inside a compiler, but a different meaning to the general public. With our new compilers able to generate messages in several languages, we also hit the limits of our fluency in those languages (often very low) so that in some cases we have no translation at all, and where we do have one it may not be as clear to a native-speaker as it might be. (I'm reminded of an urban legend about some English spies during war time who communicated using the French language as they had learned it in school, and were completely unintelligible to anyone else - the ultimate "code talkers".)

This is a request to the many eyes and brains in the community out there: please, if you have seen a message from one of our products that makes no sense to you even after reading the description in the manual, or if you have a suggestion for a better way of phrasing one of our messages, please post your contribution here, and feel free to comment on any other suggestions that may appear.

My request also extends to our users speaking (and reading, of course) languages other than English - if you have any concerns with the translations we supply, or translations for any messages we have missed from your language, please post here. If you would like us to supply translations in some language we do not yet support, please also contribute - there may be others who want the same, but haven't told us either.

Note: While we also like to receive suggestions for improved functionality, in this thread I am not soliciting suggestions for new messages not already generated; just comments on the wording of stuff that's already there. (Any really keen wordsmiths are advised to look into the "??_msgs.txt" files in the compiler's DAT directory for the comprehensive list.)

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Mark Pappin - HI-TECH Software



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