Re: Meaning of flat list?
Martin Eberhard Schauer wrote:
> today the German team encountered the following description:
>
> This is a flat list of $language words and names. This can be used
> by spellcheckers or any other purpose needing a lot of words.
>
> I wonder whether flat means small in this context. Furthermore,
> substituting "or any" by "or for any" sounds better to me.
I would interpret it as "simple" - as opposed to one containing nested
sub-lists or similar internal structure. In the case of a collection
of words I suppose the distinction is that it's just a list and not a
sentence or something, but a lot of the the time it seems a bit more
of a technical term than is really necessary.
In fact when I ask a nearby non-geek what she would understand by the
expression, her first guess is that it means a list integrated into
the linear running text ("One, Two, Three") rather than a tabulated
list like this:
* One
* Two
* Three
As for s/or any/or for any/ - agreed. Alternatively it might be "for
spellchecking or any other purpose..."
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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