[systemd-devel] [PATCH] Use normal English elide in place of ellipsize

[Shawn Landden]

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 8:15 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> 'Twas brillig, and Andrey Borzenkov at 04/02/14 15:36 did gyre and gimble:
>> В Tue,  4 Feb 2014 15:31:58 +0000
>> Barry Scott <barry.scott at onelan.co.uk> пишет:
>>
>>> Change the messages output and also all internal
>>> function names and variables to match.
>>
>> As a non-native English speaker I must admit ellipsize was more
>> understandable. I am not sure I would understand "elide" if it was not
>> used in this context.
>
> As a native English speaker I must admit that "elide" was a new one on me!
I am a native English speaker. I was familiar with elide, but not in
this context, however
it is clear to me now that this is the correct word for what we are doing.
>
> I asked one of my colleagues (a former English teacher) and his take on
> it was that "an elision" is more commonly used to mean "joining
> together" (which in the process might mean abridging some of the
> components) - this is typically the usage in music notation for example
> where a line joining two notes together.
we are joining the beginning and the end together
>
> I do agree that ellipsize is not a real world but it is quite descriptive.
>
> If we do want to describe the action taken rather than the effect, then
> I would use the word "truncate" here, rather than elide as this is
> really what happens now as implemented.
>
> If the logic was made smarter to not necessarily truncate at the end
> (e.g. to remove vowels or similar), then "abbreviate" would be better
> (although I cannot see this happening any time soon in a language
> agnostic way!).
>
> My £0.02
>
> Col
>
> PS, why is "abbreviate" such a long word?
abbreviate is not correct, as we make no attempt to preserve the full meaning.

Shawn