Dear Maintainers,
translating the package description I found an old translation that I
disliked.
I'm afraid an inexperienced translator was mislead be the description.


Description: GNU assembler, linker and binary utilities

    This is easy to understand, but in my opinion not entirely correct. One
    might think that assembler and linker are not binary utilities (programs
    to work with binaries). Having written the last sentence, perhaps the
    short description is ok - the assembler prepares the input for the
    linker, the linker provides the binary, other programs deal with the
    binaries. I think the description should not provide reasons for
discussing
    it.

    There is also the name problem. Is the GNU assembler named GNU
assembler or
    does it just mean the assembler written by the GNU folks? What is their
    name for the assembler?

  The programs in this package are used to assemble, link and manipulate
  binary and object files.  They may be used in conjunction with a compiler
  and various libraries to build programs.

    To me the long description is simply unfortunate. One could think
    (depending on the command of the English language and programming
    experience) that assemble, link and manipulate are valid operations for
    binaries as well as object files. "They *may be used* ... to build" is
    wrong - they *are* used.

    Perhaps a possible rewording for the description is (recycling the
    upstream (1) description:

Description: GNU utilities to create and manipulate executable files
  The GNU binutils have been written to give the GNU system the facility to
  compile and link programs. They are used during the build process and have
  been ported most major Unix variants as well as Wintel systems.

   An alternative to the first sentence might be:

  The GNU binutils are used to compile assembly programs to object files, to
  link them to executable files and to manipulate the binaries.


Kind regards,
    Martin

1: http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/
    The binutils have been ported to most major Unix variants as well as
Wintel
    systems, and their main reason for existence is to give the GNU
system (and
    GNU/Linux) the facility to compile and link programs.

Martin Eberhard Schauer wrote:

Encouragingly it has lost the leading capitalised definite article
between Wheezy and Sid.

I wouldn't agree with that; the conjoined noun phrase has always
struck me as subtly confusing.  I nearly submitted a bugreport back in
May.

The question is, is it trying to say that the package contains
"assembler utilities, linker utilities, and binary ones", or "an
assembler, a linker, and some binary-utilities"?  It's got to be the
latter, hasn't it?  But this confusingly implies that "as" and "ld",
the most important executables in the package, are not themselves
binary utilities; which makes the package name a strange choice.

I am assuming of course that when it says "binary utilities" it means
"utilities for use on ELF binaries", not "utilities that are binary"
(that is, in a non-text format, or indeed base-2).

If the initial "GNU" goes only with "assembler", that leaves "linker"
in a strange position.  I've always assumed it describes all of them.

Agreed about the strangeness of some of those verb/noun combinations -
besides, isn't "manipulate" a broad enough term to cover both
"assemble" and "link"?  And aren't the object files themselves
technically (non-executable) ELF binary files?

I don't entirely agree about the "may" though - it only means that
they "can" be used, which is fair enough because having binutils
installed doesn't force me to use them.

Those are both a bit unclear about whether it includes a compiler.

The much less modified suggestion I was contemplating earlier this
year was one that went:

  Description: GNU binary utilities, including assembler and linker tools
   This package provides the GNU binary utilities, together with the
   GNU assembler (as) and GNU linker (ld). These programs are used to
   manipulate program object code, and in conjunction with a compiler
   and various libraries to build executable binaries.
  Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils

I abandoned that because I wasn't convinced anyone else would care,
but it looks like I was wrong.