Dan, I understand the context perfectly (but I'm an system analyst). It seemed to me that this sentence could be ambiguous to the end-user. At least that seemed me when translating to Spanish. But really I don't know if it's the same in English. I think that somebody could interpret the sentence thus:
"Set the length to this field 20 units up or down respect to the longest FirstName". So that, if the length to the longest FirstName= 35, the reader could set length=15 (35 - 20) or length=55 (35 + 20). But, it's very possible that it is a bad interpretation of my part, and that the sentence it's fine. My English is very poor, obviusly, and for this reason I try to verify always my interpretations. Regards, and thanks for your attention. -- Fabián Flores Analista en Informática Aplicada Docente Univ. Nac. del Litoral OOoAuthors (spanish translation team) El Sábado 06 Mayo 2006 11:44, Dan Lewis escribió: > I used the number 20 because most first names are shorter than 20 > characters. > Would it be clearer to state: "Make the length smaller or larger than > 20 based upon the length of the longest FirstName"? I thought from the > context that it was clear what was to be made smaller or larger. Perhaps > not. > > Dan
