control: reopen -1 On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 11:59 AM, Philip Hands <p...@hands.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 08 Jan 2018, Michael Stapelberg <stapelb...@debian.org> wrote: > > In the context of “pk4 - avail the Debian source package producing the > > specified package”, I interpret “avail” as a shorter alternative to “make > > available”. > > Ah, yes, I see. > > While the existence of the word "available" suggests such a meaning for > the word "avail", sadly English is not quite as predictable as that, and > avail does not actually mean that at all. > > BTW avail apparently comes from the obsolete "vail" of Middle English, > meaning "to have value". > > In my experience avail is only seen in very limited circumstances these > days (which suggests that it's on its way to obsolescence too): > > 1) followed by his/her/oneself, meaning something like make use of: > > The thirsty man availed himself of the drinking fountain. > > 2) as part of "of/to no avail", meaning without success: > > He attempted to fly by flapping his arms, to no avail. > Another meaning seems to be as a synonym of “to use”. In the context in which I first learnt about this word, “make available” and “use” were synonyms, hence I went with the wrong meaning. Thanks for the correction. > > I presume that available started out as meaning specifically "something > that one might avail oneself of", and has drifted a little to it's > current meaning since -- hence the confusion. > > That being the case, you could perhaps use "obtain" or "provide" or just > "make the source available". I suppose "provision" might work too, > although it's a bit of an odd usage. "prepare" also might work. > “make available” is the most descriptive, but also the longest. I still prefer it over the other suggestions, as “obtain” is not necessarily true (the source often is already on the hard disk, in which case the program simply starts a shell in the correct location) and “provide” implies the program has a more active role in this job then it actually has. I’ll think about this some more, but might need to fall back to “make available”. > > HTH > > Cheers, Phil. > -- > |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. > |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ > |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY > -- Best regards, Michael
