Re: English usage bug in bytecomp.el

[Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>]

 > >
 > > I don't know if it's correct or not but I think it is effective use of
 > > English.
 > 
 > "efficient" you mean probably .  Let us just replace every "is not"
 > and "was not" and "has not" with "ain't".  That is also efficient.

This is a bit surreal! No, I mean effective as in "it conveys the meaning"
which is what language is intended for, although it might not impress
professors of English. If I had meant efficient, I would have said so. What
is efficient English anyway? Using the minimum number of words/letters?

 > > I think its important to remember that English may not be the first
 > > language for many Emacs users. "`foo' is an obsolete function since
 > > 21.4" is concise: it tells the user that foo *is* obsolete and then
 > > that it became obsolete in version 21.4. He doesn't have to
 > > understand the many forms of past tense that English can have.
 > 
 > We are not talking about whether it is impossible to make sense out of
 > what is written.  But I don't see how the non-first language speaker
 > actively gains anything if we switch to a bastardized version of
 > English.  We don't require the readers of the manual to write correct
 > English themselves, we just strive to be understandable even for
 > non-native speakers.  But I don't see that the correct English usage
 > here would have any detrimental effects.

If I remember correctly, "has been an obsolete function" is the perfect tense,
and suggests a completed action i.e it has been obsolete but what is its
status now. It has some ambiguity.

Anyway, lets not delude ourselves, the international language is American
English, perhaps it also sounds natural on that side of the Atlantic.

Nick.