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Re: [PATCH] docstring changes

From: Gavin Baumanis <gavinb_at_thespidernet.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:50:29 +1000

Hi Ed,

In-line with my previous post - I would vote to changing it to your
(and the original intent) definition of "if and only if".
I would hate for the community to lose it's ...(I can't come up with
an appropriate / better word - but for "flavor"),
But in a comment - as opposed to code - anything that lowers the bar
- so as to allow more people to understand and contribute, is a
positive direction to take.

And in this instance it is obvious that Edmund (and others I am sure)
have read the documentation and believed it to be a spelling/typing
error as opposed to a technically relevant term.
Which leaves the reader at a level of thinking they understand - but
missing the point / intent entirely and by consequence not actually
understanding, what they think they do.

English speaking countries (even differing districts in the same
country) apply different meaning to words / phases.
What hope does a non-English speaking / English as a second language,
person have?

My view is to go for the simplest explanation possible - to leave out
colloquialisms / local language constructs and to be as non-technical
as possible for the purposes of documenting code.
Well written code - should be sufficient for those with the technical
understanding of the project and the plain-english description should
allow the not-so technically apt to fully understand (at least) the
intent of the code.

Gavin.

On 22/04/2009, at 2:35 AM, Ed Price wrote:

> "Iff" is a common abbreviation (math-ism?) for "if and only if".
>
> So you might want to leave that one alone.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_and_only_if
> http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Iff.html
>
> -Ed
>
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Stefan Sperling <stsp_at_elego.de>
> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:18:59PM +0800, Edmund Wong wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Just finished reading svn_wc.h and came up with a few
>>> changes to some docstrings.
>>
>> All of those look all fine to me.
>>
>> Stefan
>>
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
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Received on 2009-04-22 01:50:48 CEST

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