Re: [PATCH RESEND] git-svn: don't confuse editors with an apostrophe

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 29, 2011, 16:28 UTC
Message-ID: <7viptxxbr7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1304077214-1707-1-git-send-email-cmn@elego.de>

Carlos Martín Nieto <cmn@elego.de> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> The quotation mark serving as an apostrophe confuses editors and they
> think a large part of the rest of the file is a string. Change
> "you're" to "you are" to avoid this.
>
> Signed-off-by: Carlos Martín Nieto <cmn@elego.de>
> Acked-by: Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
> ---
>
> I sent this on 31-03-2011 but apart from Eric's ack, there was no
> reaction and I don't see it in the patch queue.

It was on purpose that I did not apply it, as the usual mode of operation has been for me to pull git-svn changes via Eric, and more importantly, I did not think it was important.

It did not look like a bugfix that needed to be handled quickly (even by bypassing Eric if needed), and more importantly, I did not think your justification of the patch was sound. So I (implicitly) made it up to Eric either to discard it or to include it as part of his pull-request.

The explanation Eric gave (Avoiding contractions may make life easier for folks less familiar with English overall) makes some sense to me, but after re-reading your justification today, it still does not make sense.

For one thing, many editors would not even think "you" is not a string and "re" and everything follows is a string, when "you're" is given to them. Everything is a string in a text editor, isn't it?

I suspect that you are talking about syntax highlighting, and some syntax highlighter may be stupid to be confused, but in that case, at least you would need s/editors/some editors/.

Most fundamentally, I do not see why output from "sub usage" that lists available commands when "git svn -h" is asked for has anything to do with an editor getting confused. Why do you have that output in your editor in the first place?

Even if the reason you have that output in your editor were sane, do you mean to say that _all_ messages we output from our program, not just "git svn", need to be cleansed of contractions? That is madness, and I do not think that is what you meant. You need to clarify when your "do not contract" rule applies fairly narrowly to avoid such a misunderstanding.