[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] change AC3 to AC-3

[Diego Biurrun]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 05:22:51PM -0400, Justin Ruggles wrote:
> Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 01:03:59AM +0200, Ivo wrote:
> >> On Wednesday 06 August 2008 00:21, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 05:42:36PM -0400, Justin Ruggles wrote:
> >>>> I'm not saying that this is what I always follow... but if I had to
> >>>> choose a set of rules...
> >>>>
> >>>> I think that a period should be used for either indicating the end of a
> >>>> complete sentence or separating a Doxygen brief description from a
> >>>> detailed description.  For capitalization, I think that the only
> >>>> considerations should be normal English grammer: start of a sentence,
> >>>> proper names, acronyms, etc...
> >>> I don't see where we disagree...
> >> You disagree on what composes a sentence. I have to say I'm with Justin on 
> >> this. Why would a sentence without a verb or object not be a sentence? 
> >> Imagine having two of those after eachother. How would you tell where one 
> >> ends and the other starts if there's no period?
> >>
> >> Hey, you there!
> >> Yes, you!
> >> Never cry wolf.
> >> My kingdom for a horse!
> >>
> >> Those are all sentences in my book and would look silly if the first letter 
> >> was not properly capitalised and/or the last character was omitted.
> > 
> > All of these are exclamations and not *written* English.  I never made a
> > statement about how best to transcribe spoken into written English.  The
> > subject matter here is (good) technical writing and which way to spell
> > in code comments and similar.
> > 
> > In this context, my rule makes perfect sense, i.e.
> > 
> > /* Prevent overflow. */
> > /* backwards compatibility */
> > /* simple AC-3 encoder */
> > /* Ensure that the requirements from above are met. */
> 
> I agree with all of those.
> 
> The specific example that confused me was possibly just an ambiguous
> borderline case.
> 
> "tables taken directly from the AC-3 spec" vs.
> "Tables taken directly from the AC-3 spec."
> 
> It could be interpreted as an incomplete sentence fragment:
> (These are) tables taken directly from the AC-3 spec
> which is similar to your example above:
> (This is a) simple AC-3 encoder
> 
> or it could be interpreted as a lazy complete sentence:
> (These) Tables (were) taken directly from the AC-3 spec.

Yes, the difference is subtle and both interpretations are possible.  It
was a quick review, don't assume that I gave things more than a few
seconds worth of thought :)

> The difference is subtle.  So no worries.  It seems that I agree with
> your general policy.

Glad to hear that.  It's good to have the native speakers agree.  Keep
in mind that this is about having a bunch of non-native speakers/writers
produce decent output.  Heuristics that work well in 95% of the case but
are easy to apply are better than complex rules for 100% correct English
as the latter are likely to be ignored.

Diego