Re: ansi2knr and pmake

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Salut Alexandre,

* Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote on Wed, May 10, 2006 at 10:48:57PM CEST:
> >>> "RW" == Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:

>  RW> OK?  
> 
> Yes, please.

Thanks.  Applied.

> 
>  RW> * lib/am/ansi2knr.am (ansi2knr): Rename target as..
>  RW> (./ansi2knr): ..this, for BSD make.
>  RW> (%ANSI2KNR-DIR%/ansi2knr): Adjust.
> 
> How come all your ellipses have only two dots instead of three?

Hmm.  Good question.  Dunno where I got that from.  I think I've seen it
being used in some other GNU style ChangeLog entries, but now looking
around, that certainly doesn't seem common style.  I think there was a
reason to avoid the space before/after the ellipsis when at the start or
end of a sentence, as opposed to ... in the middle of it.  Other than
that, it always struck me as a bit odd that ellipses were used in this
context at all: after all, you're not really leaving out anything, but
trying to point out that the sentence continues in the next piece of the
ChangeLog entry.  In normal language, at least in German, I don't think
you'd use the ellipsis in that way; consider, as an extreme, that you
would not use an ellipsis at the end of a written page, just to convey
that the text continues on the next page; you simply do not write a
trailing period.

Another data point: some programming languages use two dots elements
which are similar to ellipses, e.g., the perl range operator (but perl
has three dots as well), the bash-3.1 sequence `{3..5}' and similar.
None of that is an argument for using two dots inside ChangeLog entries,
though.

I'll try to change this habit.  

> (Bear with me.)

I don't know what for; in fact, I'm afraid you'll have to bear with me,
as I tend to forget the copyright update, the three-dot ellipsis, and
probably some other conventions as well from time to time.  ;-)

Cheers,
Ralf