On 04-08-2014 22:17, Armin K. wrote:
> On 08/05/2014 02:40 AM, Bruce Dubbs wrote:
>> The word 'unity' is quite valid here, but for an international audience,
>> the word 'one' would probably be better.
>>
>> u·ni·ty
>> ˈyo͞onətē/
>> noun
>> noun: unity
>>
>> 1. the state of being united or joined as a whole.
>>
>> 2. Mathematics British
>> the number one.
>>
>> Origin Middle English: from Old French unite, from Latin unitas, from
>> unus ‘one.’
>>
>> -- Bruce
>
> Right, mathematics. I've never seen it used in this context (a
> sentence). We should really keep the instructions as simple and as clear
> as possible. No need for unnecessary complications and uncommon phrases
> (especially for non-native speakers).
On 05-08-2014 05:47, akhiezer wrote:>
> Even in math, 'roots of unity' is about the only at-all common usage:
> but even then, it's at least as often considered to be sounding archaic
> and contrived (possibly also pretentious), and is instead expressed as
> 'roots of 1'.
>
>
> So, definitely here "... larger than one.", and not "... larger than
unity.";
> and not "... larger than 1." .
>
>
> ("So, if we're all speaking as one - with a unity of voice - then let's
> do it.", &c)
>
First, this discussion does not apply anymore to the book, the whole
sentence was removed.
Blame it "mathematics", "especially for non-native speakers", "contrived
(possibly also pretentious)" are comments that perhaps are valid. As a
"non-native speaker", I cannot be sure.
However, I learned it more than two and a half decades ago, in London,
from someone who was (don't know if still is) editor of a scientific
journal (not in mathematics, BTW). Incidentally, he was later knighted
by the Queen. That was the way we all used for publishing papers (again,
not mathematics), most of mine were published in USA in scientific
journals considered between the best in the world, and intended for
international (non-native speakers) audiences. The editors and referees
never complained.
At the time I was corrected to use the expression, I questioned, and it
he explained me that it was the elegant way.
Related to this is a complaint by Armin in his usual way that frequently
makes me feel as being "hit by a brick" (his words). He wanted me to
replace "for" by "because", to "make it more clear". Again, it was in
those times that I learned, questioned, and had the same explanation
from the same person.
Because it was so long ago, they might be now in disuse (I consider
myself a dinosaur, although feeling like a teenager).
Also, I left London two and a half years ago, stopped wrinting in
English about tw decades ago, and since then, only twice, both for a
couple of months, went back to countries were I needed to use English:
years 1992 and 2007. Therefore, "my English" is now very rusty,
unfortunately, and I will be glad to accept any corrections to it.
Anyway, I accept that for our audiences, I should try to use as popular
as possible words.
On 04-08-2014 21:12, Bruce Dubbs wrote:> William Harrington wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 4, 2014, at 4:15 PM, Bruce Dubbs wrote:
>>
>>> Gnu make's capability to run parallel jobs (threads of execution)."
>
>> It's jobs, not threads. Also, the man page of make has no indication of
>> parallel.
>>
>> Let me give you an example of jobs and threads.
>>
>> http://randu.org/tutorials/threads/
>>
>> That's for threads.
>
> That's one fairly technical definition.
>
>> THis is for jobs:
>> SUBDIRS = a b c default: all $(SUBDIRS):: $(MAKE) -C $@ $(MAKECMDGOALS)
>> all clean : $(SUBDIRS)
>
>
> If two or more sequences of operations proceed simultaneously, then we
> can call it multiple jobs or multiple threads of execution.
>
> If we run 'make -j2 program1 &' and 'cd /someotherdir; make -j2 program2
> &', then bash says it's two jobs, not four.
>
> How technical we get with our definitions depends on context.
Yes, Bruce.
And what is interesting in this discussion is that from one side the
text is criticized as not being precise, from the other, a very precise
expression used was criticized with many different words and sentences
even as "possibly also pretentious".
When I was living abroad (is this a consistent English sentence?),
parallel computing was starting to be researched in informatics. So, it
is kind of new to me. Actually, we didn't even have multi-tasking.
What I understand is that building one package with n simultaneous jobs
is equivalent to building in parallel n different parts of a package,
code, parallel build. Feels to me as equivalent to building n packages
in parallel, each using one job. In both cases, much care is necessary
when creating a Makefile or when selecting the packages, for parallel
build, there is always the risk that one job needs the result of another
one, again, in both cases.
From a logical point of view or from the chip's point of view, multiple
jobs and parallel build seem to be practically equivalent.
Again, I may be wrong.
I like to spend half half of the morning working in fixes to the book,
rather than discussing. But there was so much discussion about supposed
mistakes that I didn't do, that I exceptionally decided to write.
But now, will be back to the book.
Thanks all for the discussions, I learned a lot, and will try to modify
my commits accordingly.
--
[]s,
Fernando
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