From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 17067 invoked by alias); 4 Feb 2004 00:00:31 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 17059 invoked from network); 4 Feb 2004 00:00:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO grayscale.canids) (67.169.96.182) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 4 Feb 2004 00:00:30 -0000 Received: from grayscale.canids (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by grayscale.canids (Postfix) with ESMTP id 727AE60 for ; Tue, 3 Feb 2004 16:00:14 -0800 (PST) From: Felix Lee To: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: "Documentation by paper" References: <200402030808.i13882Zb011563@speedy.slc.redhat.com> <20040203164406.ECE6460@grayscale.canids> <40201E09.7020809@gnat.com> In-Reply-To: <40201E09.7020809@gnat.com> on Tue, 03 Feb 2004 17:17:45 EST from Robert Dewar Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0000 Message-Id: <20040204000014.727AE60@grayscale.canids> X-SW-Source: 2004-02/txt/msg00221.txt.bz2 Robert Dewar : > If any term yields more than 500 pages, you can almost COUNT on the > fact that there will be subtle variations in the definition of the > term! well, that's true for pretty much any word in any natural language. it's generally expected that people can resolve ambiguities from context (even in math papers). and in programming, the actual program is usually a pretty strong disambiguator. if all those pages refer to the same paper that defines the term, then there's probably not going to be much variation in usage. this can be turned into an argument in favor of "documentation by paper", since semantic drift happens when you don't simply cite authority, but this is getting silly. everyone already agrees that readable code is a good thing. it isn't hard to handle that on a case-by-case basis. "it took me a while to figure out what this meant. how about this patch for clarity?" --