Re: Apologia for bzr

[Toby Cubitt]

On Fri, Jan 03, 2014 at 09:37:16AM -0500, Richard Stallman 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. ]]]
> 
>     This is the Emacs mailing list I'm on, right? Emacs of "find" a file to
>     open it, files live in "buffers", "windows" aren't windows but "frames"
>     are, "kill" to cut and "yank" to paste fame? ;-)
> 
> Emacs did these things first, and our terminology came first.  If you
> wish to complain about the use of incompatible terminology by other
> systems inconvenient, you need to send your complaints to their
> developers.

Do I really need to put a humour disclaimer after ever attempt at levity?
I thought the emoticon would be sufficient indication, but apparently not 
<sigh>.

OK, since you seem to need one, here you go: The above comment is a
joke. I'm well aware of the history of Emacs and its terminology, I don't
have a problem with it, I'm not advocating changing it, I don't think you
or anyone else is to blame because rest of the world chose to use
different terminology, nor do I feel any need to complain to developers
of other software about that choice.

>     The same could be said of most unix man pages. Good man pages aren't
>     supposed to be tutorials.
> 
> That's true.  That's the job of a real manual.
> Still, man pages should be comprehensible.

That's true. Personally, I find them comprehensible. If someone else
finds them hard to understand, perhaps they could help to improve them?
After all, they're released under a free software license. For better or
worse, git and its sometimes idiosyncratic interface is probably here to
stay.

Best wishes,
Toby
-- 
Dr T. S. Cubitt
Royal Society University Research Fellow
and Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge
Centre for Quantum Information
DAMTP, University of Cambridge

email: address@hidden
web:   www.dr-qubit.org