Re: [PATCH] HACKING: More language clean-up

At 3:05 PM +0100 2004/10/12, Julian Foad wrote:
>Michael W Thelen wrote:
>>Chris Pepper wrote:

>>> Clarify that the key for secure programming is developer understanding,
>>>not necessarily further education.
>
>I don't see that the meaning was unclear before. Not that your
>replacement is worse, but I don't see the need to change it. Surely
>it's obvious that if a developer has already been educated
>sufficiently in the subject, then this shouldn't be read as implying
>that he still needs more. This is aimed at new readers of the
>HACKING file, and it is reasonable to assume that most of them are
>not "educated" to the desired degree in this subject. Or maybe you
>don't like the word "education" because it implies a formal,
>structured activity, whereas any means of learning is of course
>acceptable.
>
>I won't stop you changing it if you're sure that you are improving
>it, but I'm not sure.

        As I read it, the thrust is that everybody needs to learn
secure programming. I consider this likely to irritate programmers
who feel they are already educated about secure programming, and that
my wording is less likely to raise hackles, while making the same
point.

        It's not terrible as-is, though, so just leave it.

>>> Removed 'staked' from 'staked ownership', as it's neither formal nor
>>>complete.
>
>I don't understand your objection. What isn't formal or complete?
>The staking of ownership? This is talking about staking of
>ownership as a possible impression on a new reader, not as something
>that really existed. Note that "appears to have staked" is the verb
>phrase, and "ownership" the noun; were you reading it as "appears to
>have" and "staked ownership"? The wordings "appears to have staked
>ownership on the file" and "appears to have ownership of the file"
>mean effectively the same to me, but with the former (original) case
>additionally conveying the desired impression of "staking" being the
>writing of the "owner's" name in the file with intent to claim the
>file as his/her own.
>
>So I disagree with this change.

        Here's the diff:

        file). This is to discourage territoriality -- even when a file
        has only one author, we want to make sure others feel free to
        make changes. People might be unnecessarily hesitant if someone
- appears to have staked ownership on the file.
+ appears to have ownership of the file.

        "staked ownership" is sloppy idiom to me; one stakes a claim
to ownership. Cleaner phrasing would be "People might be
unnecessarily hesitant if someone appears to have staked a personal
claim to the file.", but that's not great either. If you don't like
the change, just skip it too.

>>Thanks for the patch. I've filed it as issue #2097:
>>http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2097

        I've cast a vote for it.

        "No responses on the dev list." on that page confuses me a
bit, as both Julian and Michael have responded to the list...

        So how should I continue with language patches? Post them to
this list, and if there are no major concerns, they go it (possibly
with tweaking), while patches with stronger reservations become
issues?

        This is a little awkward, as I'd like to provide unrelated
patches to the same files; maintaining multiple patches against the
same file(s) is hard to keep track of. I guess I'll have to learn
about branches, but not this week...

                                                Thx,

                                                Chris

--
Chris Pepper:               <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University:     <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>
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