[Ffmpeg-cvslog] r8312 - trunk/doc/faq.texi

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi

On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:00:25AM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> writes:
> 
> > Hi
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 01:21:41PM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> >> diego <subversion at mplayerhq.hu> writes:
> >> 
> >> > Author: diego
> >> > Date: Sat Mar 10 14:12:24 2007
> >> > New Revision: 8312
> >> >
> >> > Modified:
> >> >    trunk/doc/faq.texi
> >> >
> >> > Log:
> >> > markup/wording/spelling/formatting improvements for the last commit
> >
> > thanks for cleaning my mess up ...
> >
> >> 
> >> Can we make it a rule that any commits to documentation must use
> >> correct spelling and grammar, at least to the best knowledge of the
> >> committer?
> >
> > iam not happy about such a rule at all ...
> 
> I was afraid you might not be.  Would you care to explain why you
> think it's OK to write barely understandable English in documentation,
> but insist on top-notch code?  I agree about code quality being
> important, but I find it odd for someone to be so strict about some
> things, and yet completely careless about others.

well lets see
* IMHO capitalization and punktuation doesnt improve readability, especially
  not in the way in which it is used in normal languages, maybe if we would
  rather capitalize keywords which are important, its rather that most people
  are used to specific things being capitalized and have difficulty if the
  text is not capitalized in the same way ...
* as i never capitalize & punktuate in a standard conformat way i lack
  practice so dont overestimate my ability to do it correctly if i wanted...
* additionally iam 99% sure everyone writes docs to their best knowledge
  about spelling, grammer, and such, sure everyone can read the check the
  text 3 times and fix everything they notice but that costs extra time and
  turns a hated job into one most people wont do at all, few developers like
  writing docs ...
* there is no lack of people who can and do fix the spelling&grammer and they
  can within short time produce much more readable text than what the average
  developer can in 5 times more time, its simply that some people are better
  at coding and some better at writing docs, also keep in mind many developers
  are not native english speakers ...

so what is the goal of such a new rule?
* make thouse who intentionally write unreadable docs write better ones?
-> there are no such people IMO so this fails
* make people spend twice the time writing docs ?
-> this would surely improve initial commit doc quality at the expense of
   fewer commits to the docs, do we want that? i dont ...
* prevent non native english speakers from comitig to the docs?
-> this will very significantly reduce the number of commits to the docs

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves? -- Diogenes of Sinope
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