Dan Pascu <[email protected]> writes: > On Monday 29 December 2008, Max Battcher wrote: >> Dan Pascu wrote: >> > On Sunday 28 December 2008, Trent W. Buck wrote: >> > > Incidentally, why do we have both --no and --dont prefixes?! >> > >> > Probably because --no-allow-conflicts sounds terrible compared >> > to --dont-allow-conflicts ;) >> >> But --no-conflicts might work. > > I personally find --no-conflicts to be a poorer choice for 2 reasons: > > 1. It's less obvious that is the counter option for --allow-conflicts > 2. It's less explicit in its meaning than --dont-allow-conflicts > > I fail to see why the fact that there are both 'no' and 'dont' options > is an issue.
My real problems are that 1) "dont" looks bloody silly without an apostrophe; and 2) it'll require more code to handle two cases, --[no-]-foo and --[dont-]foo. > It's both easier to remember and to write commands that more closely > track the native human language [...] "The" native human language? I guess there's also 3) using --no-foo consistently throughout the application is, to me, easier to understand and remember than using --dont-foo sometimes, because "do not foo" sounds "better" to native English speakers. Certainly other utilities I've used with a single consistent negator prefix never bothered me because --no-foo didn't sound like "good English". I mean, if you extend this argument to its logical conclusion, we'll end up with something like fetchmailrc or intercal's "please x = x" noop! >twb starts frothing at mouth< _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
