Re: [PATCH 3/6] git-check-ref-format.txt: avoid single quote

["Martin Ågren" <martin.agren@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 14 May 2021 at 00:00, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Martin Ågren <martin.agren@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Asciidoctor renders 'git cat-file' with the single quotes.
>
> I somehow find this sentence a bit hard to grok.  Do you mean
> "instead of typesetting them emphasized, the two-word phrase is
> enclosed in a pair of literal single quotes"?

Yes. I will improve the description.

> I have no problem with this particular rephrasing from "srcref's
> value" to "value of srcref", but forbidding possessive "'s" from any
> future documentation is troubling.

I think this is a case of several things going on in one paragraph in a
way that confuses the tool. As Felipe commented, it's probably correct
to call it out as an Asciidoctor bug. If we hit is *once* across all our
documentation, I think it's correct to work around it [and report the
bug, if we can], but not let the experience impose a blanket rule on
ourselves that we mustn't do anything that even resembles this
paragraph.

> > -. A colon `:` is used as in `srcref:dstref` to mean "use srcref\'s
> > -  value and store it in dstref" in fetch and push operations.
> > +. A colon `:` is used as in `srcref:dstref` to mean "use the value
> > +  of `srcref` and store it in `dstref`" in fetch and push operations.
> >    It may also be used to select a specific object such as with
> > -  'git cat-file': "git cat-file blob v1.3.3:refs.c".
> > +  'git cat-file': `git cat-file blob v1.3.3:refs.c`.
>
> The proposed log message did not explain why you wanted to avoid
> double-quote pair on the "cat-file" line.  Is this meant as a
> workaround for the "single quotes are shown around git cat-file"
> issue?

Hmm, I've somehow tended to think that it's 'git foo' the tool and `git
foo --bar baz` the actual invocation. SQs for the former, backticks for
the latter. Like, `git cat-file` is not a correct invocation of 'git
cat-file'. But I think I'm starting to see the error in my ways --
CodingGuidelines says to use backticks around command names, so it
really should be `git cat-file`. And changing that might just happen to
avoid the issue that triggered this patch.

Thanks for your comments.

Martin