[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Fix some typos in avfilter.h

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Sunday 2008-08-24 17:31:12 -0400, The Wanderer encoded:
> Stefano Sabatini wrote:
> > On date Sunday 2008-08-24 15:24:21 -0400, The Wanderer encoded:
> >> Stefano Sabatini wrote:
> 
> >>> Yes again, and I now see that my correction was outright wrong,
> >>> anyway the way the sentence is formulated leads naturally to
> >>> confusion, as I was reading it as:
> >>> 
> >>> And all the references of
> >>>     a and b,
> >>>     and a and b
> >>> will be deallocated.
> >>> 
> >>> so it seemed to me just a wrong repetition, so maybe some
> >>> reforumlation may improve its clearness.
> >> 
> >> I can see what you're talking about. It read clearly enough to me,
> >> but it could certainly be made less potentially ambiguous, though
> >> I'm having a hard time of coming up with a way to do it without
> >> using uncommon grammatical forms - something like "Also deallocates
> >> a, b, and all references thereof.", which is technically correct
> >> but will seem awkward to many people.
> > 
> > What about
> > "Also all the references of a, b, and a and b themselves will be deallocated."
> > ?
> 
> Because of the nature of a comma-separated list, that expands (or could
> be interpreted by a reasonable reader as expanding) to
> 
> "all the references of a"
> "all the references of b"
> "all the references of a and b themselves"
> 
> when what we want is
> 
> "all the references of a"
> "all the references of b"
> "a and b themselves"

I took it literally, redundant and not very elegant, and elegance is
for the shoemaker.
 
> not to mention that beginning a sentence with "Also" and not having a
> comma right after it is at least awkward and may be incorrect - and
> including the comma would result in a too-many-commas problem.

Too bad for the too-many-commas issue, that means I'm not going to win
the literature Nobel prize for this patch...

> > For what regards the second hunk:
> > "Therefore, we have the format list structure store a pointer..."
> >             we have the format list structure *to* store a pointer..." 
> > 
> > I know both forms are used, can you tell which is the more correct?
> 
> Neither is grammatically incorrect, but the nuances of their meanings
> are slightly different. I personally prefer the current form, although
> the one in the patch you attached is also acceptable.

Well, since my change is indifferent to you too then I removed the
incriminated hunk.
 
> > Sorry for the nitpicking, feel free to ignore this patch if you think
> > this discussion is just a timewaste.
> 
> Nitpicking over grammar is something I can spend quite a bit of time on;
> I'm unlikely to get sick of it before you do, though I may not continue
> to have enough time to keep it up.^_^ Note, however, that perfection in
> this kind of issue can be exceedingly hard to achieve, and some might
> argue that it isn't worth the effort for a simple code-documentation
> comment.

Very true, maybe it would have been better for the world economy if I
wouldn't ever posted it in the first place, but having done that error
the best thing to do seems to me just to proceed stubbornly... ;-)

Regards.
-- 
FFmpeg = Frenzy and Fostering Mega Picky Elastic God
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