Re: emacs-30 baaf97ce1a1: ; Fix some ungrammatical uses of "allows to"

[Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>]

Hello,

On Fri 30 Aug 2024 at 10:18pm +03, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> I disagree, but that is not the important aspect of this.  The
> important aspect is that changing grammar should not make the text
> harder to read and understand.  By mechanically changing those places
> to be grammatically you definitely made at least some of the text more
> awkward and hard to read.  E.g., look at this one:

Let me just note that I didn't do it mechanically.  I always read the
surrounding context if I change something like this, else I can't know
for sure that I did it correctly.

>   -The command @code{recover-file} no longer allows to display the diffs
>   +The command @code{recover-file} no longer allows displaying the diffs
>
> Does this really read well to you?  Or how about this one:
>
>   -dnl The first variable allows to distinguish all three cases.
>   +dnl The first variable allows distinguishing all three cases.
>
> "Allows distinguishing"? really?

Yes -- I don't find these the slightest bit unclear, unnatural or
difficult to read.  "allows distinguishing" doesn't stand out to me.

> You should have instead reworded the text to avoid the use of these
> constructs, making the text more clear and side-stepping the issue of
> "allow to" entirely.

Well, in this, as you are a non-native speaker, your opinion on whether
it's clear counts for more than mine.  So I would be happy to put in the
effort to try to make it clearer.  However, I don't think I'm capable of
doing a good job, because they all read perfectly fine for me.

My only suggestion would be "allows you to make Emacs distinguish" ?

-- 
Sean Whitton