Re: Bug#363011: Improve the man pages of --date=STRING for 'date' and 'touch'.

[Bob Proulx]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> "A. Costa" <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 1) Sentence #3 ("The string may contain...") might go before #2, ("If 
> > empty...").
> >
> > 2) Suggest 's/If empty the/An empty/'.  Less to think of.
> >
> > 3) Are five instances of the plural noun "items" necessary?  The
> >    plural doesn't make logical sense for one-shot items, e.g. "may
> >    contain ... day of week itemS?", but the 'touch' date string
> >    contains at most one day.
> 
> Good suggestions.
> Would you mind sending a patch?

I know this was addressed to A. Costa but it was fresh in my mind so...
How about this?

  git fetch --no-tags git://git.proulx.com/coreutils date-string2:date-string2

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 31b0e14..cb67e99 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+2008-01-30  Bob Proulx  <address@hidden>
+
+       Improve wording of date and time man page.
+       * man/date.x: Improve compact description of the --date=STRING.
+       * man/touch.x: Likewise.
+       Suggested by A. Costa.
+
 2008-01-30  Jim Meyering  <address@hidden>
 
        * src/c99-to-c89.diff: Adjust remove.c offsets, again.
diff --git a/man/date.x b/man/date.x
index c6e3a65..bbcbafc 100644
--- a/man/date.x
+++ b/man/date.x
@@ -6,8 +6,8 @@ date \- print or set the system date and time
 .\" NOTE: keep this paragraph in sync with the one in touch.x
 The --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string
 such as "Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" or "2004-02-29 16:21:42" or
-even "next Thursday".  If empty the string indicates the beginning of
-the day.  The string may contain calendar date items, time of day
-items, time zone items, day of week items, relative items, and pure
-numbers.  The date string format is more complex than is easily
+even "next Thursday".  A date string may contain items indicating
+calendar date, time of day, time zone, day of week, relative time,
+relative date, and numbers.  An empty string indicates the beginning
+of the day.  The date string format is more complex than is easily
 documented here but is fully described in the info documentation.
diff --git a/man/touch.x b/man/touch.x
index 71f405b..6c3aac2 100644
--- a/man/touch.x
+++ b/man/touch.x
@@ -6,8 +6,8 @@ touch \- change file timestamps
 .\" NOTE: keep this paragraph in sync with the one in date.x
 The --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string
 such as "Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" or "2004-02-29 16:21:42" or
-even "next Thursday".  If empty the string indicates the beginning of
-the day.  The string may contain calendar date items, time of day
-items, time zone items, day of week items, relative items, and pure
-numbers.  The date string format is more complex than is easily
+even "next Thursday".  A date string may contain items indicating
+calendar date, time of day, time zone, day of week, relative time,
+relative date, and numbers.  An empty string indicates the beginning
+of the day.  The date string format is more complex than is easily
 documented here but is fully described in the info documentation.