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SubjectRe: [PATCH] Remove unnecessarily gendered language
On Mon 2013-12-02 20:18:52, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> The kernel as a number of cases of gendered language. The majority of these
> refer to objects that don't have gender in English, and so I've replaced
> them with "it" and "its". Some refer to people (developers or users), and
> I've replaced these with the singular "they" variant. Some are simply
> typos that I've fixed up.

Why is this good idea?

I don't think this makes documentation better.

> @@ -127,7 +127,7 @@ gid=
> umask= Provide default owner, group, and access mode mask.
> These options work as documented in mount(8). By
> default, the files/directories are owned by root and
> - he/she has read and write permissions, as well as
> + they have read and write permissions, as well as
> browse permission for directories. No one else has any
> access permissions. I.e. the mode on all files is by
> default rw------- and for directories rwx------, a

So... we had unambiguous text "user has read and write permissions"
and now you have to wonder if they refers to "user" or
"files/directories".

(And I'm pretty sure most people will parse it the wrong way.)

> @@ -23,7 +24,7 @@ Quota netlink interface
> When user exceeds a softlimit, runs out of grace time or reaches hardlimit,
> quota subsystem traditionally printed a message to the controlling terminal of
> the process which caused the excess. This method has the disadvantage that
> -when user is using a graphical desktop he usually cannot see the message.
> +when user is using a graphical desktop they usually cannot see the
> message.

Is this even correct english?


NAK, FWIW.
Pavel
--
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html


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