Re: Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index

From: Drew Northup <drew.northup@maine.edu>
Date: Mar 6, 2011, 12:44 UTC
Message-ID: <1299415483.5468.18.camel@drew-northup.unet.maine.edu>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTimX3n5PNdK9YpA92SQM7G-WAiC1aPP7qJ-UEudq@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 13:53 +0900, Miles Bader wrote:

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> 2011/3/5 Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>:
> > First I liked this proposal, but then I thought about 'git diff
> > --preped' (doesn't really sound right). I think the term should:
> >
> >  1) Have a nice noun version; staging area, preparation area
> >  2) Have a nice verb version; to stage, to prep
> >  3) Have a nice past-participle; staged, cached
> >
> > Casting? Forging? I don't know, staging always seems right.
> 
> I agree.
> 
> I don't why so many people seem to be trying so hard to come with
> alternatives to "staged" and "staging area", when the latter are
> actually quite good; so far all the suggestions have been much more
> awkward and less intuitive.
> 
> It's true that "staging area" and "stage" as a verb are most intuitive
> for native english speakers, but so far none of the alternatives
> really seem any better for non-native speakers.  _All_ of these terms
> are "learned" to some degree, and in that sense are arbitrary, but the
> smoothness and intuitiveness of "staging area"/"stage" for english
> speakers is a real plus I think.

It has already been pointed out that this isn't always quite as intuitive as it sounds to many. I think we'd be flogging a dead horse to continue discussing that.

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> As for translations, is it even an issue?  If term "XXX" is the
> optimum term in some other language, then that should be the
> translation for that langage, _regardless_ of what the english term
> used is.
> 
> -miles

Having translated stuff before, and having helped clean-up / finish translations from other languages to English, I can say that it most certainly DOES MATTER what the idiom used in the source language is. Unless I the translator know more about how something works than the core developers that wrote it I am highly dependent on the explanations they have used. That is why it is important to have a complete and portable metaphor. In fact, that's exactly what I was thinking about when I suggested "commit preparation area" earlier in this thread--the translation to Spanish is a tad verbose but it is entirely clear without further jiggering or expectation of specific cultural knowledge.

I'm not sure why that "fails" the equally arbitrary participle-mapping test... It sure has one, but as a native English speaker and a brutal editor I am perfectly comfortable with the notion that not all verbs have natural noun forms and vice-versa.

-- 
-Drew Northup
________________________________________________
"As opposed to vegetable or mineral error?"
-John Pescatore, SANS NewsBites Vol. 12 Num. 59