Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 5 Dec 2013 11:48:08 +0100 | From | Pavel Machek <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] Remove unnecessarily gendered language |
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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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