From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jonathan Nieder Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] Provide some linguistic guidance for the documentation. Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2013 23:25:41 -0700 Message-ID: <20130802062511.GA3013@elie.Belkin> References: <1375197114-10742-1-git-send-email-marcnarc@xiplink.com> <1375369825-28636-1-git-send-email-marcnarc@xiplink.com> <7vfvuts25p.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Marc Branchaud , git@vger.kernel.org, Fredrik Gustafsson To: Junio C Hamano X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Aug 02 08:25:57 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1V58oG-00018X-0U for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Fri, 02 Aug 2013 08:25:56 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753953Ab3HBGZw (ORCPT ); Fri, 2 Aug 2013 02:25:52 -0400 Received: from mail-pb0-f51.google.com ([209.85.160.51]:41192 "EHLO mail-pb0-f51.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753326Ab3HBGZv (ORCPT ); Fri, 2 Aug 2013 02:25:51 -0400 Received: by mail-pb0-f51.google.com with SMTP id jt11so318763pbb.10 for ; Thu, 01 Aug 2013 23:25:51 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=date:from:to:cc:subject:message-id:references:mime-version :content-type:content-disposition:in-reply-to:user-agent; bh=jX+H9+AhQRbgxz1mnWjSTmsQG+BuZVYFGvSBptJd0SE=; b=mJKwBVHZr2MP0Zmc7pWrzMV9p/CfW57dzsmnt9fJ1eD6mFYIJGudYhw+7TeYofIsOJ JmbPboUwYfqR2odYKc911x+erMuXkVXsPpmeng0Hxc/XIcLmPYkbmwR4gK3SPhVY5lBv i2gz/Bh5ZhoJ/AwL/5FjerY9a6uDtM8So+hTQt3i3CJ7vXFkEM2Cq54mEOnb/Cmh0cKj 94k+Gdupdy7X0+ACxG4rpPwB3G1nNaiuJWGmRUJYZLeyG3uNKWt6rbKeTDhPa6uvteC7 bynrMEdCpCc8zlYGex+qZ+3YNO64ZlPrgoqsKkU3clToCvwLZbGhOHgukvAPISp9mWNZ fyXg== X-Received: by 10.66.25.232 with SMTP id f8mr8800458pag.25.1375424751011; Thu, 01 Aug 2013 23:25:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from elie.Belkin (c-107-3-135-164.hsd1.ca.comcast.net. [107.3.135.164]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPSA id a5sm8267439pbw.4.2013.08.01.23.25.49 for (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Thu, 01 Aug 2013 23:25:49 -0700 (PDT) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <7vfvuts25p.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21+51 (9e756d1adb76) (2011-07-01) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Junio C Hamano wrote: > Is that accurate? My impression has been: > > The documentation liberally mixes US and UK English (en_US/UK) > norms for spelling and grammar, which is somewhat unfortunate. > In an ideal world, it would have been better if it consistently > used only one and not the other, and we would have picked en_US. I'm not convinced that would be better, even in an ideal world. It's certainly useful to have a consistent spelling of each term to make searching with "grep" easier. But searches with "grep" do not work well with line breaks anyway, and search engines for larger collections of documents seem to know about the usual spelling variants (along with knowing about stemming, etc). Unless we are planning to provide a separate en_GB translation, it seems unfortunate to consistently have everything spelled in the natural way for one group of people and in an unnatural way for another, just in the name of having a convention. I am not sure it makes sense for the documentation to say "A huge disruptive patch of such-and-such specific kind of no immediate benefit is unwelcome". Isn't there some more general principle that implies that? Or the CodingGuidelines could simply say The documentation uses a mixture of U.S. and British English. My two cents, Jonathan