Re: Bits from the Lintian maintainers
Axel Beckert <abe@deuxchevaux.org> writes:
> One point though:
> I have an upstream developer who comes from Derby, England originally
> and says that some of the accused misspellings[1] are not very common
> English but nevertheless correct English -- and of course that he won't
> change them in his documentation.
> [1] http://lintian.debian.org/maintainer/abe@deuxchevaux.org.html#dphys-config
> In particular he says that "usefull" and "authentification" are correct
> spellings.
> So maybe these warnings should be downgraded to the informational level,
> and the appropriate lintian rule could be called
> uncommon-spelling-in-manpage or so instead.
> Or are lintian overrides the better way to handle this?
My policy for varient spellings in dispute is to check the OED for British
spellings and Merriam-Webster for US spellings (since I have easy access
to both) and allow anything they allow. Neither permits either usefull or
authentification, and I think too obscure for the OED is too obscure for
Lintian to accept since it's the dictionary of record for UK English.
So I think an override is the best approach in this situation, if your
upstream doesn't find the OED persuasive.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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