On 2021-4-4 11:20 , Kevin Reid wrote:
On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 5:22 PM [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I know it's just one data point, but I thought the replies I got on
this Hacker News comment today were interesting. I can understand
why he/she got confused, and I wonder if there's anything MacPorts
could do to make it clearer.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26678498
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26678498>
As worded, the FAQ text "the ports you install will be compiled only for
the architecture you're currently running on" implies (in the linguistic
rather than logical sense) that the compilation happens after you
request installation. The minimal patch would be to change the tense to
"will *have been* compiled only for", but an even better rewording might
be something like
"…the ports' installed binaries will have been compiled for your
computer's architecture…"
to avoid putting the user's computer in any active role in that sentence
and to make it clear we're talking about the binaries and not the
compilation process per se. Perhaps "will contain machine code for"
would be even more rigorous, but it might be less familiar.
Of course, this sentence may not be the whole problem, but it's what I
saw in that thread, it's likely /part/ of the problem, and it made a
good example of the kind of sentence that can be read differently by a
reader not already familiar with the subjet.
It's a tricky thing to state both concisely and accurately because the
compilation may indeed happen on the user's computer after installation
is requested. Or it may not. The ambiguity of whether "be compiled" is a
verb in the passive voice ("the code is being compiled") or a
description of a state ("this is code compiled for x86_64") may reflect
the author's awareness of the undecidedness of which one will actually
happen.
Improvements to the text's clarity are very welcome, of course.
- Josh
