patchFix two documentation typos

I noticed a couple typos while reading through some manpages. 

First was "...if it is does not..." which just contained an extraneous "is".

Then I noticed a "can not" and updated that and other occurrences in Documentation to cannot. The glossary sentence with "can not" was "Consequently, an object can not be changed." To me, that reads like "it is permissible to not change an object, but it is possible that an object may be changed." Switching to "cannot" makes a stronger assertion that it is impossible to change an object.

There are also two error messages, "can not move directory into itself" and "Can not do reflog for '%s': %s\n", which I chose to not modify in this patch. I am happy to s/an not/annot/ those as a separate change if it is acceptable to change the wording on an error message like that.

Mark Rushakoff (1):
  doc: typo: s/can not/cannot/ and s/is does/does/

 Documentation/config/transfer.txt             | 2 +-
 Documentation/git-cvsserver.txt               | 2 +-
 Documentation/git-fetch.txt                   | 4 ++--
 Documentation/git-pull.txt                    | 2 +-
 Documentation/glossary-content.txt            | 2 +-
 Documentation/technical/api-ref-iteration.txt | 2 +-
 6 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

base-commit: 7c20df84bd21ec0215358381844274fa10515017
Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-304%2Fmark-rushakoff%2Fdocs-typofix-v1
Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-304/mark-rushakoff/docs-typofix-v1
Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/304

From: Mark Rushakoff <mark.rushakoff@gmail.com>

"Can not" suggests one has the option to not do something, whereas "cannot" more strongly suggests something is disallowed or impossible.

Noticed "can not", mistakenly used instead of "cannot" in git help glossary, then ran git grep 'can not' and found many other instances. Only files in the Documentation folder were modified.

'Can not' also occurs in some source code comments and some test assertion messages, and there is an error message and translation "can not move directory into itself" which I may fix and submit separately from the documentation change.

Also noticed and fixed "is does" in git help fetch, but there are no other occurrences of that typo according to git grep.

Signed-off-by: Mark Rushakoff <mark.rushakoff@gmail.com>
---
 Documentation/config/transfer.txt             | 2 +-
 Documentation/git-cvsserver.txt               | 2 +-
 Documentation/git-fetch.txt                   | 4 ++--
 Documentation/git-pull.txt                    | 2 +-
 Documentation/glossary-content.txt            | 2 +-
 Documentation/technical/api-ref-iteration.txt | 2 +-
 6 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

"Mark Rushakoff via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

Thanks.

Hmph, I am not a native speaker, but I have to say that this is the first time I heard that "I can not drive" to mean "I have a choice of not driving (even though I am capable of driving)".

On Sat, Aug 03, 2019 at 07:48:20AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

I think in writing I would assume that "can not" is "unable to" (and a brief skim of online resources indicates they have equivalent meanings). But colloquially, I might say something like: "I can _not_ put mushrooms in the soup if you'd prefer" (where the underscores indicate an emphasis I'd give when speaking).

So I don't find it overly ambiguous, but I think there's no reason not to prefer "cannot".

That said, I think in many error messages, "unable to" is often better (and we already use it quite frequently). This one (that Mark mentioned but didn't change in this patch) is especially bad:

  $ git grep -in 'can not' '*.c' | head -1
  builtin/checkout.c:834: fprintf(stderr, _("Can not do reflog for '%s': %s\n"),

because of the vague "do". Maybe "unable to create reflog for '%s': %s'" would be better. Also, why isn't this an error()?

The other one he mentioned:

  $ git --no-pager grep -B2 -A3 'can not' builtin/mv.c
  builtin/mv.c-		else if (!strncmp(src, dst, length) &&
  builtin/mv.c-				(dst[length] == 0 || dst[length] == '/')) {
  builtin/mv.c:			bad = _("can not move directory into itself");
  builtin/mv.c-		} else if ((src_is_dir = S_ISDIR(st.st_mode))
  builtin/mv.c-				&& lstat(dst, &st) == 0)
  builtin/mv.c-			bad = _("cannot move directory over file");

is rather egregious as the message just below uses "cannot". And here "cannot" makes more sense to me than "unable to", as we did not try a thing that failed; it is literally something that one cannot do at all, because it does not make sense. So it is Git saying "you cannot do this", not "I was unable to do this". :)

-Peff

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Thanks. In any case, none of the s/can not/cannot/ in Mark's patch is making anything worse (the only case I can think of that a blind search-and-replace would break would be a phrase like "I can not only do X but...", but the none of the ones Mark spotted is like that), so let's take the patch as-is for now.