Thus spake Alex Martelli ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > I can't find any reference for Steven's alleged idiomatic use of "by > eye", either -- _however_, my wife Anna (an American from Minnesota) > came up with exactly the same meaning when I asked her if "by eye" had > any idiomatic connotations, so I suspect it is indeed there, at least in > the Midwest. Funniest, of course, is that the literal translation into > Italian, "a occhio", has a similiar idiomatic meaning to _any_ native > speaker of Italian -- and THAT one is even in the Italian wikipedia!-) > > I'll be the first to admit that this issue has nothing to do with the > substance of the argument (on which my wife, also my co-author of the > 2nd ed of the Python Cookbook and a fellow PSF member, deeply agrees > with you, Aldo, and me), but natural language nuances and curios are my > third-from-the-top most consuming interest (after programming and... > Anna herself!-).
I must admit to a fascination with language myself - I even have a degree in English literature to prove it! To be fair to Steven, I've asked some of my colleagues here in Sydney about their reactions to the phrase "by eye", and none of them have yet come up with anything that has the strong pejorative taint Steven gave it. At any rate, it's clear that the phrase is not well defined anywhere (not even in the OED), and I'm sure there are substantial regional variations in interpretation. In cases like these, however, context is paramount, so I will quote sentences that started this petty bickering: > The security implications have not been sufficiently explored. I don't want > to be in a situation where I need to mechanically "clean" code (say, from a > submitted patch) with a tool because I can't reliably verify it by eye. Surely, in context, the meaning is clear? "By eye" here means nothing more nor less than a literal reading suggests. Taking these sentences to be an argument for a slip-shod, careless approach to code, as Steven did, is surely perverse. Regards, Aldo -- Aldo Cortesi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nullcube.com Mob: 0419 492 863 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
