Re: Flamewars & Why pedantic spelling is good.
Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:
> wrong. like "howto", "zonefile" has been in common usage in its field
> for several years. in fact, it has been in common usage longer than
> "howto" has.
Several people have already pointed out that, in fact, DNS documents
always say "zone file" and not "zonefile".
> to admit that, though, would mean admitting that perhaps i was right in
> complaining about trivial and erroneous bug reports like "zonefile" and
> "usenet"....and you wouldn't want to do that, would you? the dilemma is
> that it would mean annoying the maintainers of "howto" packages with
> moronic bug reports....far better to simply pretend that "howto" is a
> special case.
Um, every bug should be taken seriously. If you think some bugs are
beneath your notice, please find someone else to maintain your
packages who will take all the bug reports seriously.
> small minded people think that dictionaries prescribe language. anyone
> who has studied even basic linguistics knows that they do not,
> linguistics is a *DESCRIPTIVE* discipline...it does not presume to
> prescribe what a language *should* be, it describes what a language
> *is*. living languages evolve over time - new words are invented, old
> ones fall out of usage or gain new meanings or lose old meanings.
Where did that come from? In this case, there is a good reason to aim
for consistency across Debian, and instead of participating in that
effort, you're doing your level best to scuttle it.
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