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

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 22:00:07 +0100
> 
> > 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" ?

I would reword to say something like "The first variable can be used
to distinguish..."  And similarly in the other cases.  For example:

   ** 'window-text-pixel-size' understands a new meaning of FROM.
  -Specifying a cons as the FROM argument allows to start measuring text
  -from a specified amount of pixels above or below a position.
  +Specifying a cons as the FROM argument allows starting the measurement
  +of text from a specified amount of pixels above or below a position.

Here I would say

  The FROM argument can now be a cons, which means to start measuring
  text from...

To summarize: IME, when people use problematic grammar, it is always
better to completely reword the text, and in many cases such rewording
will make the text much more clear and easy to understand.