Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Eric Kow writes:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Add Smart Patches page.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ah OK, now we're starting to approach the bit I'm most interested in
Indeed.
I'm uncomfortable with the label "smart patches", it's too breezy and
marketroidy. The patches aren't smart, Darcs is.
It is mighty hard to come up with a good label. You wouldn't believe how
long it took me to think of that one. 'Theory' and 'Algebra' are
intimidating. Smart Patches at least convey the message that there is
smartness going on and that the centre is on patches. Plus, it is
something that any SCM user will resonably understand. And it at least
goes with the front page "Darcs is smart" and the tag line "Darcs is
clever for you, so you don't have to be".
> > +<center>*The idea of transforming patches (e.g. F to F')
> > depending on context<br/> +is the key idea behind darcs' Smart
> > Patches.*</center>
Regardless of you spell "theory of patches", the spelling of the
possessive of "Darcs" is "Darcs's". The only "Darc" I know is
Ste. Jeanne.
I did not write "Darc" anywhere, I wrote "Darcs'". When a word ends in
"s" (Jesus, Darcs) the possessive is formed by appending an apostrophe
only and keeping the pronunciation intact. I didn't invent this rule. I
just followed it.
What would be marketing pluses here would be (a) if Darcs is able to
warn you about "dangerous" merges, and (b) the way that Darcs handles
"mv" and "darcs mv" differently, and therefore allows the user to
specify the semantics (in a way that git certainly cannot, since the
only way it recognizes renames is by checking the index of content
similarity -- "git mv a b" has no additional semantics beyond "mv a b;
git rm a; git add b", it does not create a "mv patch").
Could you suggest an example of (b)? I'm sure it would be useful in the
documentation.
Indeed. Again, I don't want to be amazed by my VCS. Mostly, I don't
want to notice it all.
How about being amazed at how little you notice it? :-D It's funny
because I was saying something very similar to my fiancee the other day.
I was telling her that what I loved most about <X product> is that I
don't notice it in my daily work.
I also think that patch theory documentation should be left up to the
folks who do abstract algebra for fun and profit.
There is a small kernel that is relevant to users. I tried to compile
that in the "Smart Patches" section, and purposely named it different,
not only to make it less intimidating, but also to distinguish between
the content that is for users and the content that is for math geeks.
What we want on the
front page and anything linked from it is simply to drip with absolute
confidence that for any sane project Darcs will always do the right
thing, and remark that the reason for this confidence is a logically
rigorous mathematical theory.
I already lost confidence. How do I know if my project fits your
definition of sane?
Daniel.
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