Re: directory search fails!

[Philip Guenther]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 5:37 AM, ali hagigat <address@hidden> wrote:
> Why Philip Guenther wrote: "Examples cannot explain"?!!!

<sigh>

I wrote "Examples cannot explain, they can only demonstrate a subset
of the logic."  Paul's example does not "explain the logic", it only
demonstrates one particular aspect of it.

Parts of a sentence can restrict the meaning of other parts of that
sentence.  If you take part of a sentence out of its context, it can
change meaning.  Doing so and then ascribing the 'new' meaning to the
original author is unfair to them, as "they didn't really say that".

Would manuals be better written without complex verbal structures?
Probably.  There will be a trade off in length and effort required.
In the business world, there are people that are paid lots of money to
rewrite surveys and documentation into simpler language.  Training
open source developers to do that would cost a lot, perhaps not in
money but certainly in time, and there would be some trade off in
features developed.


> Paul Smith wrote an example, it was very useful in understanding the
> issue. Why we did not mention the example in the manual?

Perhaps it should be added...but I hope this page isn't just updated
piece-meal, with an example added now, the text tweaked later, and
another example added still later.  If that happens, then the
comprehensibility of the page will suffer as time goes on.  The
overall flow of the page should be considered when updates are
suggested.

Anyway, I'm going to shut up now because I have run out of time to
spend here right now.  Best wishes.


Philip Guenther