[systemd-devel] [PATCH] Reword sentences that contain psuedo-English "resp."

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mon, 15.10.12 09:41, Andrew Eikum (aeikum at codeweavers.com) wrote:

Heya,

> 
> As you likely know, Arch Linux is in the process of moving to systemd.
> So I was reading through the various systemd docs and quickly became
> baffled by this new abbreviation "resp.", which I've never seen before
> in my English-mother-tongue life.
> 
> Some quick Googling turned up a reference:
> <http://www.transblawg.eu/index.php?/archives/870-Resp.-and-other-non-existent-English-wordsNicht-existente-englische-Woerter.html>
> 
> I guess it's a literal translation of the German "beziehungsweise", but
> English doesn't work the same way. The word "respectively" is used
> exclusively to provide an ordering connection between two lists. E.g.
> "the prefixes k, M, and G refer to kilo-, mega-, and giga-,
> respectively." It is also never abbreviated to "resp." So the sentence
> "Sets the default output resp. error output for all services and
> sockets" makes no sense to a natural English speaker.
> 
> This patch removes all instances of "resp." in the man pages and
> replaces them with sentences which are much more clear and, hopefully,
> grammatically valid. In almost all instances, it was simply replacing
> "resp." with "or," which the original author could probably just do in
> the future to avoid this problem.
> 
> The only other instances of "resp." are in the src/ subtree, which I
> don't feel privileged to correct.
>                                  <term><option>--until=</option></term>
>  
>                                  <listitem><para>Start showing entries
> -                                newer or of the specified date,
> -                                resp. older or of the specified
> +                                newer than the specified date,
> +                                or older than the specified

Hmmm, as I understood the text you linked this usage is actually
correct, as "resp." means "each separately in the order mentioned",
which is precisely what is meant here. The diff doesn't show it, but
this section is about both --since= and --until, hence we explain the
meaning of --since= first, and then of --until=, and link this with
"resp.". 

So, now I am really confused, what's really right and wrong here? ;-)

>                                  <literal>tomorrow</literal> are
>                                  understood, which refer to 00:00:00 of
>                                  the day before the current day, the
> -                                current day, resp the day after the
> +                                current day, or the day after the

same here: we first list the possible strings, and then their meanings,
in the same order.

>                                  current day. <literal>now</literal>
>                                  refers to the current time. Finally,
>                                  relative times may be specified,
>                                  prefixed with <literal>-</literal> or
>                                  <literal>+</literal>, referring to
> -                                times before resp. after the current
> +                                times before or after the current
>                                  time.</para></listitem>

here too.

>                          </varlistentry>
>  
> diff --git a/man/os-release.xml b/man/os-release.xml
> index 5e34a88..b39f95a 100644
> --- a/man/os-release.xml
> +++ b/man/os-release.xml
> @@ -280,7 +280,7 @@
>                                  "About this system" UIs behind links
>                                  with captions such as "About this
>                                  Operating System", "Obtain Support"
> -                                resp. "Report a Bug". The values should
> +                                or "Report a Bug". The values should

Same here...

>                                  be in <ulink
>                                  url="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986">RFC3986
>                                  format</ulink>, and should be
> diff --git a/man/sd-daemon.xml b/man/sd-daemon.xml
> index 1e1734a..8d1986d 100644
> --- a/man/sd-daemon.xml
> +++ b/man/sd-daemon.xml
> @@ -139,7 +139,7 @@
>                  check the liberally licensed reference implementation
>                  sources:
>                  <ulink url="http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/plain/src/libsystemd-daemon/sd-daemon.c"/>
> -                resp. <ulink url="http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/plain/src/systemd/sd-daemon.h"/></para>
> +                or <ulink
> url="http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/plain/src/systemd/sd-daemon.h"/></para>

This one is really an incorrect usage of resp. afaics.

>                  <para>The four calls return the number of entries
>                  advanced/set back on success or a negative errno-style
> -                error code. When the end (resp. beginning) of the journal
> +                error code. When the end (or beginning) of the
>                  journal

This appears to be correct usage of "resp", again as this describes
sd_journal_next, as well as sd_journal_resp.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.