[PATCH] doc: provide guidance on user.name format

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It's a frequent misconception that the user.name variable controls
authentication in some way, and as a result, beginning users frequently
attempt to change it when they're having authentication troubles.
Document that the convention is that this variable represents some form
of a human's personal name, although that is not required.  In addition,
address concerns about whether Unicode is supported.

Use the term "personal name" as this is likely to draw the intended
contrast, be applicable across cultures which may have different naming
conventions, and be easily understandable to people who do not speak
English as their first language.  Indicate that "some form" is
conventionally used, as people may use a nickname or preferred name
instead of a full legal name.

Point users who may be confused about authentication to an appropriate
configuration option instead.

Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
There are a *lot* of users on Stack Overflow who have difficulty with
what user.name controls, such that it may be one of the top questions.
Additionally, we occasionally see issues from new contributors to Git as
well.  Furthermore, other VCS systems do things differently, so it's
best to document the conventional expectations for users explicitly.

Users may or may not read the documentation, but at least we've done our
best at providing them helpful information should they choose to do so.

 Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt | 6 ++++++
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt b/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt
index 4b90b9c12a..34a8496b0e 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt
@@ -92,6 +92,12 @@ if set:
 
 (nb "<", ">" and "\n"s are stripped)
 
+The author and committer names are by convention some form of a personal name,
+as opposed to a username, although Git does not enforce or require any
+particular form. Arbitrary Unicode may be used, subject to the constraints
+listed above. This name has no effect on authentication; for that, see the
+`credential.username` variable in linkgit::git-config[1].
+
 In case (some of) these environment variables are not set, the information
 is taken from the configuration items user.name and user.email, or, if not
 present, the environment variable EMAIL, or, if that is not set,



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