Re: How much is lintian an expert in english language ?

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Russ Allbery wrote:
> (Not 100% sure whether "eventual" is a term of art here, or is intended to
> have the English meaning of something that isn't implemented yet but may
> appear later.

That's one of the bugs of german-english dictionaries.
Our "gegebenenfalls" ("ggf.") means "if the case is given",
"if applicable", but is often translated in dictionaries with
"eventually". This use is widespread in the web, too.

I now try with

  In general there are two approaches for writing media:
  A permissive mode selected by option -tao which needs
  no predicted track size and can use multi-session
  capabilities if offered by drive and medium.
  A more restrictive mode -sao [...]

(I compensated the loss of words by new ones which shall
 clarify the technical situation.)

While waiting for a human or automatic reaction on
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796145#57
i changed some "allow" without object
  http://libburnia-project.org/changeset/5475


> Both native and non-native
> speakers, on first draft, often add far more words than are required.

That's due to the euphoria when a newly programmed feature
passed the first tests and needs to be documented. The
programmer still knows too much about the motivation and
difficulties. I tend to put more emphasis on the novelty than
it actually deserves in comparison to older features.

CD TAO was the reason why i started to learn how to operate
a CD burner. I was really proud when it was achieved. So the
most obvious exaggeratons are likely to occur with this topic.

In general there are technically correct docs, human readable
docs, and no docs. I try to produce the first kind:
After you found the solution of your problem by try-and-error,
you can read in the man page why it works.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas