Re: [PATCH 5/6] Documentation/git-merge.txt: improve short description in DESCRIPTION

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 5, 2016, 21:41 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqa8eio4n9.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <871szuqyjo.fsf@javad.com>

Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:

> OK, I see. So, what is the best way to handle this? Immediately follow
> content change patch with another patch that only re-flows?

Or no reflowing at all.

Show 14 quoted lines

>> the parents".  I do not know if the updated phrasing is better.  The
>> "name" in the original was meant to be a short-hand for "object name",
>> and I would support a change to spell it out to clarify; "reference"
>> can be a vague word that can mean different things in Git, and when
>> the word is given without context, most Git people would think that
>> the word refers to "refs", but that is definitely not what the new
>> commit records, so...
>
> I won't insist on the change, but "name" sounded wrong to me, and
> "reference" was most general term I was able to come up with in this
> context.
> ...
> Last, if "reference" is not good enough and we get to internals anyway,
> why not say SHA1 then?

Because that is still colloquial? I think s/name/object name/ is a sensible change, but not s/name/reference/.