Re: Help to improve new package (djmount)
MJ Ray wrote:
> Justin B Rye <jbr@edlug.org.uk> wrote:
>> [...] Oh, and we've been standardising on two-word "file system".
>
> In general, I agree with Justin B Rye's points, but for this I ask:
> Why??? Generally, compound nouns tend to become single words and
> "Filesystem Hierarchy Standard" shows the one-word version is in
> common usage.
I'm surprised to see that Wikipedia still makes it two words, but
I'd prefer to follow their lead.
As with "web server", the problem is that technical specialists are
always the first to think of these terms as words in their own
right, while the general public still sees that as obscure and
intimidating. For "filesystem" there's also the consideration that
even the techies still mostly abbreviate it as FS, except in odd
cases like FHS (and FUSE).
>> [...] Also, "automatically discovers", not vice versa.
>
> Leading adverbs make phrases harder to understand because it is not
> yet clear what action is being done when one reads "automatically".
And yet this is a word order that native speakers naturally use in
conversational English (look, I just did it again). If the
reasoning about processing difficulty held water, we'd all speak
verb-initial languages...
Not that there's anything wrong with "discovers X automatically".
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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