Bug#602094: apt_preferences man page could use some love from a native English speaker
On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 23:18, PJ Weisberg <pjweisberg@gmail.com> wrote:
>> - the use of "you": "your biggest nightmare", "your preferences"....
>
> I don't know if there's a style guide regarding the use of 'you', but
> I don't like 'they' when the subject is singular.
My personal rule of thumb is that i avoid "you" at all costs as i don't
thing it is okay for a manual page to talk directly to me.
(but that might be my personal german-only mental thing - "you" could
be used as "generic you" as we in germany use "man" and i should
accept that the honorific "Sie" has no english equivalent anymore
and is therefore replaced with "you", too)
You have found the only exception i made so far (as far as i can remember)
"You have been warned."
This paragraph was added on request in #567669 btw.
>> - change of meaning: "more problems will arise"-->"more problems can arise"
>
> I'll admit that I changed that because it strained my credulity to
> read that there are NO packages in one release that can be used in
> another without careful consideration. But I run Sid on my personal
> computer, so maybe I just have below-average carefulness.
Lets see it that way: If it would be completely fine to use unstable and
testing packages in stable, why we need backports then?
Yes, the paragraph is worded rather scary - but pinning is a relatively
complicated feature so you can shoot yourself in the foot easily
"without a good understanding" of it. Its not a maybe/maybe not
relation - if you haven't understood pinning problems will arise, maybe
not instant (in reality never instant) but in the least expectable moment.
People already opted out of security updates with wrong pinning settings…
Regardless of what i said so far: You are completely right that APT
would benefit from a non-german developer¹ or at least from an
active prove reader in general! Can we count you in? :)
[ Someday after freeze we should try to annoy debian-l10n-english… ]
Best regards
David Kalnischkies
¹ not that we would be in a situation to choose developers from
the horde of participations based on their location…
Reply to: