On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 10:47:33PM -0700, ben wrote: > On Thursday 25 April 2002 10:04 pm, Osamu Aoki wrote: > > On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 09:54:02PM -0400, David Sewell wrote: > > > I'm beginning a second round of proofreading of the Debian Reference (aka > > > Qref). > > > > > > Is there a consensus among documentation writers on how to handle Debian > > > release codenames (Slink, Potato, Woody, etc.)? Usage varies almost > > > randomly, it seems, even in publications like the Debian Weekly News, > > > where you can find "woody" and "Woody" in the same paragraph. > > > > Correct practice is all lower case for Debian. If for toy story, > > capitalize first letter. > > > > Let's check FAQ and release note people. > > > > ftparchive.sgml /FAQ > > potato distribution name > > Mr. Potato Toy story character > > <em>potato</em> Debian codename > > <tt>potato</tt> symlink name for ftp archive > > > > Release note release-notes.sgml/boot-floppies > > releases 2.2 (`potato') > > > as a documentation user, and as a technical writer, i think that david has > the right idea--which may seem hugely ironic given that i don't observe mla > or any other rules of capitalization in my posts. forgive this indulgence; it > has to do with limitations of movement, which handicap i address by other > means that would limit the expedience i need to achieve in posting to lists. > honestly, as a reader, i would favor david's opinion of appropriate > capitalization.
If you read my "Debian reference", old sections tend to capitalize as Woody for release name. I started to use lower case after finding "correct" practice. So I had similar idea as you but I decided to follow gurus :) That is the context of my posting. Please understand. My above mentioned observation is the practice by the people who build Debian tends to prefer using lower case. I do not know root cause of it. My guess is Unix gurus like lower case. Unix is not PDP-11/VMS (or DOS) world where capitalization is more popular. As you may know, capitalization practice is more popular in American English while Brits tend to use lower case for many popular acronyms. "ben" I assume you are American by seeing you spell "favor". When arguments are about preference then it will be difficult to come to common agreement. Should we spell "CD" or "cd" for compact disc? I bet you argue to spell it as "CD" because you are an American. Why you call floppy disk while CD's are called compact disc even in USA? English is full of irregularities. "ben", if you want your opinion heard, you should have more compelling argument than you presented and it should be based on data. I will love to hear that. For me key word is "convention" in that particular organization. It rules over some generic school / news paper / journal grammar guideline. You can blame me not being consistent. I will be glad to accept its blame and corresponding patch since it is wrong thing to do. Of course, the _author_ can make choice. _Preference_ issues are very difficult to be argued with the author effectively. Another interesting question for the style of these programming books is the usage of punctuation and quotation. Type "apt-get install perl." (High school) Type "apt-get install perl". (Be practical and fail safe. I use this.) One more note on style: Progeny (User's Guide) tends to use "gnu" over "GNU". It was shocking to me. -- ~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ +++++ Osamu Aoki @ Cupertino CA USA See "User's Guide": http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/users-guide/ See "Debian reference": http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ "Debian reference" Project at: http://qref.sf.net I welcome your constructive criticisms and corrections. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
