enhancing --status-fd output (fwd)

[David Hayes]

On Sun, Mar 14, 1999 at 03:14:30AM +0100, Janusz A. Urbanowicz wrote:
> > Currently exmh is parsing the english output to get all the info it needs. 
> > That's leading to problems of course, when setting LANG to a nonenglish 
> > language.
> 
> > It would be nice to have the status lines mentioned to be independend from
> > the gpg output in native language.
> 
> I think it would be Right Thing(TM) to have the --status-fd in one standard
> way, independent of the user-end language. WIthout this, it would be almost
> impossible to write any frontend to gpg.

May I suggest doing what FTP does? The standard FTP reply codes consist
of a 3-digit status value, which is independent of language and easily
parsed by machine. There is a one-character continuation flag, and the
rest of the line is intended for human consumption, and can be rendered
in whatever language is desirable. For example:

  200-Welcome to the Hayes family FTP server.
  200-
  200-Due to space limitations, the latest copies of X Window System
  200-have been removed.
  200-
  200 Ready to serve

For GPG status output, we might not need the continuation capability,
which would leave us with a single line starting with a numeric code.

-- 
David Hayes
david at hayes-family.org