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

[Benno Schulenberg]

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

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

Benno

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