Reuben Thomas wrote: > On 17 September 2011 14:15, Jim Meyering <[email protected]> wrote: >> Reuben Thomas wrote: >>> The documentation says: >>> >>> The default mode is to print a line with checksum, a character >>> indicating type (`*' for binary, ` >>> ' for text), and name for each FILE. >>> >>> There are two problems here. First, a small one: the second character >>> is a space character, which needs to be non-breaking, and preferably >>> explained, as in "` ' (a space)". If you agree, I'll make a patch for >>> the info and man page. >> >> Sure, thanks. Though the man page renders fine for me, >> with an 80-column-wide terminal: >> >> input should be a former output of this program. The default mode is >> to print a line with checksum, a character indicating type (`*' for >> binary, ` ' for text), and name for each FILE. >> >> Maybe it depends on terminal width? > > This is what I'm saying: with the wrong terminal width, the closing > quote is on the line after the opening line, and this is possible > because the contents of the quotes is a normal space. A non-breaking > space is needed. And preferably the explanation I suggested, since ` ' > is apt to be mistaken for `'. > >> However, "... indicating type" refers to "type of checksum line", >> or "type to be used for", not the type of the file. It controls how >> md5sum opens the file, but only on systems for which O_BINARY makes >> a difference (which means it's not worth much discussion for >> unix/linux/gnu-centric documentation). > > So how about something like s/indicating type/indicating the mode in > which the file should be opened (this only matters for systems which > treat text and binary files differently)/ ?
That makes the parenthetical bit so long that the affected sentence is even harder to read. How about simplifying "the default" case and adding any additional information in a second sentence? The default mode (on systems that do not distinguish between binary and text files) is to print a line with checksum, two spaces and the name of each FILE. We still have a pesky parenthetical because the default on that other type of system is to treat everything as --binary and to print the "*" indicator.
