Re: improving DevRef 6.2.2
Ben Finney wrote:
> Justin B Rye <jbr@edlug.org.uk> writes:
>> No, that's only intended to vary to allow for packages with
>> apparently singular or plural names ("eg-utils are", "eg-tool is");
>> it stays the same regardless of how the description is phrased
>> ("...is/are a transition package for egtk").
>>
>> And I prefer the idea that names of individual .deb files should
>> always be treated as singular, whether they're derived from a
>> singular noun phrase or a plural one.
>
> Okay, it seems we agree here; I was confused over the examples, but
> probably because I had already become muddied by the surounding
> discussion.
I was confused too; in fact before you wrote I was on the point of
sending an apology for implying above that DevRef says such a
ridiculous thing. When I went and re-read the text I discovered
that I'd been right the first time.
>>>> Oh, and single quotes, I missed that.
[...]
>> The best-pkging-practices.dbk source uses plain ASCII-39 apostrophes
>> around 'Choices' (in 6.5.3), and that's the only example of quotes
>> in the text! Odd. Shouldn't it be some sort of <q>...</q>?
>
> Quite probably.
>
> Where were you proposing "oh, and single quotes"? In your suggested
> rewritten section? I can't find that in your latest draft.
No, I was just noticing the single quotes around 'Choices' and
thinking that this meant I should remember to use them myself in
text. But in fact now that I check other sections of DevRef I see
they use quotes like `this' and ``this'', apparently at random.
>> Tallying the 3600 packages installed on this Etch box, it's 224
>> instances of ' - ' versus 237 instances of final ')'; both of those
>> numbers include a lot of genuine instances of $ROLE, but brackets
>> are also pretty common for things like "(based on libpoppler)".
>
> (It seems I must be the typography geek to your linguistic geek: Those
> are parentheses, not brackets :-)
Oops, I was speaking en_GB - see
"http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/Commonwealth-Hackish.html";
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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