Hello Bjarni,
On 1/14/19 2:58 AM, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 09, 2019 at 01:01:57AM +0100, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
>> Hello Bjarni,
>>
>> On Mon, 24 Dec 2018 at 01:43, Bjarni Ingi Gislason <bjarniig@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> Changes to the git repository "man-pages" from Saturday 22th December
>>> 2018.
>>>
>>> Use a single capital font macro for a genuine single argument.
>>> The output is unchanged.
>>
>> You've sent several patches along these lines, but you've not
>> explained why you propose the changes. Is it just general tidiness? I
>> can see that argument, but given that the output is unchanged, I'm
>> also reluctant to make such changes because of churn that may
>> invalidate other pending patches. Tell me some more about the
>> rationale for these patches please.
>>
> Using an alternating font macro for one argument is for example
>
> 1) a misuse of it
>
> 2) does not comply with its description, purpose, and intended use
>
> 3) fosters ignorance
>
> 4) is not future proof
>
> 5) depends on its current implementation
>
> 6) is bad practice
>
> 7) lures readers to repeat it ("seeing is believing")
>
> 8) contradicts the fundamental rule (principle), not to depend on how
> something is implemented ("The mythical man-month")
>
> 9) is not part of computer science
>
> 10) the rules for subroutines apply generally to macros.
All of these arguments are rather tendentious. The double-letter
macros are harmless, and this is unlikely ever to change.
> Overlapping different patches create generally two situations:
>
> 1) merge conflict. Solved manually with an editor by inspection
> (git-merge(1)).
>
> 2) not usable as the context is not found. Fixed by making a new
> patch.
Yes, but when third parties are involved, then the story is
not so simple. For various reasons, I have quite a backlog of
patches from other people, and churn that results from your
patch series will almost inevitably create conflicts that
I would have to deal with at some point.
> As my patches only affect a single line, possibly far enough from
> other single line changes, both cases should not be a problem.
>
> The extent of problems depends on the order of application of
> patches.
>
> N.B. As I have already added the patches to my local repository, new
> patches have created and will only (hopefully) create merge conflicts
> for me in a few cases.
Bottom line. I'm still not inclined to apply these patches.
Unfortunately, you've also included some useful fixes in among
some of the patches (e.g., some fixes to incorrect fonts on
punctuation marks). It would have been useful to have those fixes
as separate patches so that I could apply them independently.
I will take a look at these and see what can be applied.
Thanks,
Michael
--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
