Re: [PATCH 4/4] doc: omit needless "for"

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Dec 11, 2016, 13:05 UTC
Message-ID: <2645548666054ED5BD30436E9DA41C14@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <20161209155112.2112-5-kristoffer.haugsbakk@gmail.com>

From: "Kristoffer Haugsbakk" <kristoffer.haugsbakk@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 3:51 PM

Show 5 quoted lines

> What was intended was perhaps "... plumbing does for you" ("you" added),
> but
> simply omitting the word "for" is more terse and gets the intended point
> across
> just as well, if not more so.

After some thought, I think the original is more 'right'.

Without the 'for' it suggests that understanding individual plumbing commands would explain some issue being seen with a fancy porcelain command which they probably don't. Rather the 'for' is forward looking toward using the plumbing commands as tools to investigate and then re-plumb the aestehetics to the desired output.

The whole porcelain euphemism makes for some awkward phrasing.

Show 23 quoted lines

>
> I originally went with the approach of writing "for you", but Junio C
> Hamano suggested this approach instead.
>
> Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristoffer.haugsbakk@gmail.com>
> ---
>
> Notes (kristoffers):
>    The original patch was sent to the mailing list on 2016-11-04, and
> Junio
>    replied with his suggested correction on 2016-11-10; see the cover
>    letter.
>
> Documentation/gitcore-tutorial.txt | 2 +-
> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/gitcore-tutorial.txt
> b/Documentation/gitcore-tutorial.txt
> index 72ca9c1ef..22309cfb4 100644
> --- a/Documentation/gitcore-tutorial.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/gitcore-tutorial.txt
> @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ you want to understand Git's internals.
> The core Git is often called "plumbing", with the prettier user

If we are tidying up here, then perhaps s/core Git is often/Git commands are often/ to better clarify what aspects are plumbing / porcelain.

> interfaces on top of it called "porcelain". You may not want to use the
> plumbing directly very often, but it can be good to know what the
> -plumbing does for when the porcelain isn't flushing.
> +plumbing does when the porcelain isn't flushing.

I'm not so sure that the direct allusion to 'flushing' is exactly the right tone. Part of the issue is the 'porcelain' is the initial euphemism. The other part is that both porcelain and plumbing commands have the same level of CLI un-prettiness, so the distinction isn't there.

In the end I strung together:
"
The core Git commands are often called "plumbing",
 while those with the prettier user friendly
 output are called "porcelain".

 You may not want to use the plumbing directly very often,
 but it can be good to know what the plumbing does
 when either the porcelain isn't flushing, or different output aethetics are 
desired.
"

Though having both prettier and friendly in the same phrase maybe overkill.

Show 6 quoted lines

>
> Back when this document was originally written, many porcelain
> commands were shell scripts. For simplicity, it still uses them as
> -- 
> 2.11.0
>

-- Philip