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Grammar and style police are everywhere! |
| 2 |
This week are they shooting themselves in the foot over some totally |
| 3 |
trivial and meaningless extra characters somewhere on a line? |
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Is it a case of "#TriviaDoesntMatter"? |
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AFAICT the limitations on line lengths are are ANCIENT holdovers |
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from days of fixed lenght cards and glass-teletypes. Totally meaningless |
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in today's terminal emulator in GUIs world. |
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|
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It is certainly laudable to keep text block widths reasonable. It is fact that |
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it is easier to read text at 6 or 7 inches wide versus more than 8 inches. |
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BUT, it is also clear that a *consistent* style is easier to read instead of |
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needlessly varying styles in one document. |
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|
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As for "being hesitant to touch anything anymore"... |
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Practically all of the FOSS projects have adopted rather stringent and |
| 17 |
ridiculuous requirements that programmers and other have to jump |
| 18 |
through hoops (of flame?) to prove their qualifications to do anything. |
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Gentoo is maybe one of the more conservative about having to go |
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through the motions in oder to qualify as a "developer" and, personally, |
| 21 |
I no longer have the time or inclination (at my age of 62) to do so, just so |
| 22 |
that my 50+ years of programming and typing can be subject to the |
| 23 |
arbitrary rules. I don't expect to be granted free access to the |
| 24 |
code base without some oversight, but a code review by one or |
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more others before a commit would/should be more than adequate |
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to exclude bugs and blunders from being introduced. |
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|
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Over the years I have done much for the FOSS movement, and I |
| 29 |
have posted some small tools and scripts that some may find usefull, and |
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where possible I contribute via bugzilla. I much prefer Gentoo as a platform |
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since it is still committed to allowing the users to make significant |
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choices about the environment instead of imposing "one way" policies |
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as some other projects have done. |
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|
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But seeing this little tempest merely convinces me that some folks |
| 36 |
still don't get the point that some things of a substative nature |
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(such as correctness and choice) are of more importance than |
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other things (like "style" or options.) Also, avoiding idiosyncratic |
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changes that have unforseen or un-intended consequences should |
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be coordinated with others before introduction to a stable system. |
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-- |
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G.Wolfe Woodbury |
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redwolfe@×××××.com |
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