On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 11:46:42PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote: > On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 06:06:42PM -0500, Alexander Winston wrote: > > On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 20:59 +0000, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > > > debian-policy uses the term "manpage" most of the time, but uses a > > > different spelling, namely "man page" once. It would be good if this > > > would be replaced with "manpage" in order to be consistent. > > > > Actually, I think that it would be better if the instances of "manpage" > > were replaced with their two-word equivalents, instances of "man page." > > I have attached a patch in that effect. > > Amen! Hmm. I disagree. I prefer "manpage" because, as a single term, it's more obvious that it's jargon. It's a Unix-ism to use "man" as short for "manual", a shorthand that is found nowhere else in English as far as I know. I think it would be helpful to newcomers to not tempt them to conclude that "man pages" have anything to do with "men", and I suspect they're less likely do so when presented with a single term. If we're going to use two words, we should probably say "manual page" or "reference page". However, I think consistency throughout the policy manual is more important than which precise term we go with. So even if I'm outvoted on the terminology front, I'd still approve of the change for consistency's sake. Manoj, Josip, Julian? You guys wanna toss in your two cents? -- G. Branden Robinson | My first priority in any attack is Debian GNU/Linux | to solve the problem - not issue a branden@debian.org | press release. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Steve McInerney
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