Re: [PATCH] Minor grammar and typographical changes to the book

Joel Rosdahl wrote:
>
> I'm not a native English speaker, so you maybe should take the
> following with a grain of salt. :-)

You seem to have a very good understanding of English and its grammar, loose though it (the grammar) is.

> * Made use of parentheses, quotes and commas consistent (using
> "logical quoting"):

Logical quoting is already used throughout most of the book, so it is right to make it consistently logical. But several of the instances that you have changed are of this basic form:

  Sentence (sentence).

which is grammatically poor. Some of them would be better in one of these forms:

  Sentence. (Sentence.)
  Sentence (with additional clause).

> * Added a missing space after a </quote>.
>
> * Corrected name of the extra files created when a merge conflict has
> been detected.
>
> * Removed some left-over closing parentheses.

Good.

> Index: doc/book/book/appa.xml
> Index: doc/book/book/appc.xml
> Index: doc/book/book/appd.xml
> Index: doc/book/book/appe.xml
> Index: doc/book/book/ch03.xml
> Index: doc/book/book/ch05.xml
> Index: doc/book/book/ch08.xml

Fine apart from the sentence grammar issue that I mentioned.

> Index: doc/book/book/ch07.xml
> ===================================================================
> - <!-- Fitz's revised graphic here (Heaven help us if he ever makes
> + <!-- Fitz's revised graphic here (heaven help us if he ever makes
> another piece of graphic art ... what *will* we call it?).

It's not worth changing that file just for a capitalisation in an XML comment. (It it were a capitalisation in the output text, that would be different. If there were other changes in the file, then maybe.) And some people intentionally capitalise "Heaven", considering it to be a "proper noun".

> Index: doc/book/book/glossary.xml
> ===================================================================
> - <para> A <command>svn</command> command that is used to add a
> + <para> An <command>svn</command> command that is used to add a

There is no point in changing that one unless you make the other instances of "a svn" and "an svn" consistent as well. The trouble is, some people (like you and I) pronounce "svn" as "ess vee enn" while others pronounce it "subversion" or "seven" or some such. There are several uses of "a" and several "an" in the book: try

  echo "Pronunciation \"a svn\""
  grep "[^a-zA-Z][aA] \(<[a-z]*>\)*svn" *.xml
  echo
  echo "Pronunciation \"an svn\""
  grep "[^a-zA-Z][aA]n \(<[a-z]*>\)*svn" *.xml
  echo

It would be sensible to make it consistent even if not everyone likes it.

If you want to revise some of the "Sentence (sentence)" structures and/or change all instances of "a svn" to "an svn" in the next few days, that would be great. If not, I will commit all of your changes apart from ch07.xml and glossary.xml.

- Julian

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Received on Mon Sep 1 17:22:53 2003