bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Xavier Noria via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

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Hi!

I noticed that

    https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html

has several occurrences of "MacOS".

If you look at Apple's official docs, you'll see the "m" is consistently
lowercase.

Just feedback on that. Best!

Xavier

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bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2024 09:11:39 +0200
> From:  Xavier Noria via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> 
> I noticed that
> 
>     https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html
> 
> has several occurrences of "MacOS".
> 
> If you look at Apple's official docs, you'll see the "m" is consistently lowercase.

Thanks.  We don't necessarily follow the Apple's marketing spin, so
I'm not sure we should fix these.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Xavier Noria via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

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On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 9:55 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

Thanks.  We don't necessarily follow the Apple's marketing spin, so
> I'm not sure we should fix these.
>

It's not so much about marketing, it is about correctness.

GNU is GNU, and macOS is macOS. There is no operating system called "MacOS".

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bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Xavier Noria <fxn@hashref.com>
> Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2024 10:04:06 +0200
> Cc: 73265@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 9:55 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>  Thanks.  We don't necessarily follow the Apple's marketing spin, so
>  I'm not sure we should fix these.
> 
> It's not so much about marketing, it is about correctness.
> 
> GNU is GNU, and macOS is macOS. There is no operating system called "MacOS".

If we decide to call it MacOS, we will call it MacOS.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Xavier Noria via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

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On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 10:44 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

If we decide to call it MacOS, we will call it MacOS.
>

That is ironic coming from a place that has historically demanded Linux to
be called the way you want.

Your call, anyway, I have no personal interest in this, just wanted to help
:).

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bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Xavier Noria <fxn@hashref.com>
> Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2024 10:49:06 +0200
> Cc: 73265@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 10:44 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>  If we decide to call it MacOS, we will call it MacOS.
> 
> That is ironic coming from a place that has historically demanded Linux to be called the way you want.
> 
> Your call, anyway, I have no personal interest in this, just wanted to help :).

Thank you.  I will see what we should do with those places.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: 73265@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2024 12:02:45 +0300
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> 
> > From: Xavier Noria <fxn@hashref.com>
> > Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2024 10:49:06 +0200
> > Cc: 73265@debbugs.gnu.org
> > 
> > On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 10:44 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> > 
> >  If we decide to call it MacOS, we will call it MacOS.
> > 
> > That is ironic coming from a place that has historically demanded Linux to be called the way you want.
> > 
> > Your call, anyway, I have no personal interest in this, just wanted to help :).
> 
> Thank you.  I will see what we should do with those places.

I fixed that.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Michael Albinus via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

Hi Eli,

> I fixed that.

I believe the download icon in emacs.html needs also a fix.

Best regards, Michael.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org,  fxn@hashref.com
> Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2024 15:14:16 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> Hi Eli,
> 
> > I fixed that.
> 
> I believe the download icon in emacs.html needs also a fix.

Someone else will have to take care of that.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Michael Albinus via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> I believe the download icon in emacs.html needs also a fix.
>
> Someone else will have to take care of that.

I did. Fortunately, it wasn't an icon but a text block, easy to edit.

Best regards, Michael.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Stefan Kangas]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Thanks.  We don't necessarily follow the Apple's marketing spin, so
> I'm not sure we should fix these.

We already spell it macOS in our tree, so we might as well do it on the
website too, to avoid confusion.  Marketing spin or not, I think this
spelling is harmless, FWIW.

commit dc152c54f4e44f5f2040883b03f71ff6aa66c893
Author: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date:   Sun Nov 6 00:33:43 2016 -0700

    Modernize usage of 'macOS' in doc and comments

    Apple changed the spelling of its operating system again, to "macOS",
    effective with macOS 10.12 Sierra (2016-09-20).  Change Emacs
    documentation and comments to match this.  Stick with older OS
    spellings ("OS X", "Mac OS X") when talking about older releases where
    the older names are more correct.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Xavier Noria via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

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Fixed!

On Sun, Sep 15, 2024, 13:50 Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> wrote:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > Thanks.  We don't necessarily follow the Apple's marketing spin, so
> > I'm not sure we should fix these.
>
> We already spell it macOS in our tree, so we might as well do it on the
> website too, to avoid confusion.  Marketing spin or not, I think this
> spelling is harmless, FWIW.
>
> commit dc152c54f4e44f5f2040883b03f71ff6aa66c893
> Author: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date:   Sun Nov 6 00:33:43 2016 -0700
>
>     Modernize usage of 'macOS' in doc and comments
>
>     Apple changed the spelling of its operating system again, to "macOS",
>     effective with macOS 10.12 Sierra (2016-09-20).  Change Emacs
>     documentation and comments to match this.  Stick with older OS
>     spellings ("OS X", "Mac OS X") when talking about older releases where
>     the older names are more correct.
>

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bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Xavier Noria via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

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Please, disregard my previous email, I misinterpreted the commit reference
as a patch for this one.

On Sun, Sep 15, 2024, 14:02 Xavier Noria <fxn@hashref.com> wrote:

> Fixed!
>
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2024, 13:50 Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>> > Thanks.  We don't necessarily follow the Apple's marketing spin, so
>> > I'm not sure we should fix these.
>>
>> We already spell it macOS in our tree, so we might as well do it on the
>> website too, to avoid confusion.  Marketing spin or not, I think this
>> spelling is harmless, FWIW.
>>
>> commit dc152c54f4e44f5f2040883b03f71ff6aa66c893
>> Author: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
>> Date:   Sun Nov 6 00:33:43 2016 -0700
>>
>>     Modernize usage of 'macOS' in doc and comments
>>
>>     Apple changed the spelling of its operating system again, to "macOS",
>>     effective with macOS 10.12 Sierra (2016-09-20).  Change Emacs
>>     documentation and comments to match this.  Stick with older OS
>>     spellings ("OS X", "Mac OS X") when talking about older releases where
>>     the older names are more correct.
>>
>

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bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

We should write it "MacOS", following the normal convention of proper
names in written English, because we have no reason to depart from it.
On general principles, in the absence of any reason why we would want
to depart from them, it is good to follow such conventions.

The only proposed reason to write "macOS" is that Apple asks for it.
Since Apple is an enemy of the GNU GPL, and an enemy of computer
users' freedom generally, a request from Apple is for us no reason at
all.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Xavier Noria via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

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On Wed, Sep 18, 2024 at 5:53 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> We should write it "MacOS", following the normal convention of proper
> names in written English, because we have no reason to depart from it.
> On general principles, in the absence of any reason why we would want
> to depart from them, it is good to follow such conventions.
>
> The only proposed reason to write "macOS" is that Apple asks for it.
> Since Apple is an enemy of the GNU GPL, and an enemy of computer
> users' freedom generally, a request from Apple is for us no reason at
> all.


No.

"macOS" should be written "macOS" because that is the name of the operating
system. There are no further considerations to this.

As you know, brand names are not English words and do not abide by their
rules. "eBay" is "eBay" and "BMW" is "BMW".

It's OK. I was only trying to help, assuming you'd like to know. Once you
are aware of this, it is your call.

We can close this issue folks.

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bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Stefan Kangas]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> The only proposed reason to write "macOS" is that Apple asks for it.

The main reason is actually because the old way of writing it is
"Mac OS" (1984-2000) or "Mac OS X"/"OS X" (2000-2016) and writing it
like that suggests that we only support those older versions.  It opens
the door to an easily avoided confusion.  We also have no real reason
not to use the official spelling; it's completely harmless.

I don't intend to man the barricades, but I do think that we should just
use the official spelling and be done with this.

bug#73265: Spelling of macOS

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > The main reason is actually because the old way of writing it is
  > "Mac OS" (1984-2000) or "Mac OS X"/"OS X" (2000-2016)

I write it MacOS, which is different from all the ways Apple
reportedly wries it.  It follows normal practice -- where Apple
apparently never did.

That seems ideal.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)