On 08/20/2010 07:58 AM, Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Friday 20 August 2010 14:20:35 Bill Longman wrote: >> On 08/19/2010 04:38 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote: >>> On Thursday 19 August 2010 21:21:20 Kevin O'Gorman wrote: >>>> So I looked up "auto-hinter" in the flagedit(1) program. It says: >>>> auto-hinter: Local Flag: Use the unpatented auto-hinter instead >>>> of the (recommended) TrueType bytecode interpreter (media- >>>> libs/freetype) >>>> >>>> The placement of the "(recommended)" is just a bit ambiguous. >>> >>> No, it isn't. You may be being confused by the unnecessary >>> inclusion of brackets (parentheses if you're American); remove >>> them and you see that the TrueType byte-code interpreter is >>> recommended. Or, just consider the phrase "the recommended >>> TrueType bytecode interpreter", with or without brackets. I can't >>> see how that could be thought ambiguous. >> >> I have to agree it's ambiguous. You have to wonder why the >> parenthetical "recommended" is offset if it's just part of the >> sentence. If it were as you say, there would be no need to put them >> there. As it is written it sounds like it's making an aside claiming >> that one of them is recommended and, by its placement, it's hard to >> discern its antecedent. > > Its placement puts it squarely with the noun phrase following it. To > associate it with the preceding one instead would be perverse. (Just to > continue flogging a dead horse...) :-)
Yet you yourself just put a parenthetical aside after its antecedent, not before it. Double flog. Double :-). > I agree though that the brackets are neither necessary nor helpful.
