Re: Rewrite manual intro to be gender-neutral.

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hallo Ralf, Bob,

On Jun 6, 2010, at 11:45 PM, Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden>  
wrote:

> Hello Bob,
>
> * Bob Friesenhahn wrote on Sun, Jun 06, 2010 at 05:15:11PM CEST:
> > On Sun, 6 Jun 2010, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> >
> > > This mirrors a similar recent fix to automake.texi.
> > > Any technical reasons against this patch?
> > > The rest of the manual greps ok.
> >
> > Regardless of Gary's affirmation, I don't think that replacing 'he'
> > with 'you' is suitable.  'He' and 'you' are not at all equivalent
> > terms.
>
> I'm really confused now.  Is there any specific formulation, sentence,
> or something in the manual that my change made worse in any way?
> In all autotools manuals, use of "you" is already abundant.

Actually, in this and many other cases I consider the use of "you" to  
be better style for a technical manual, since it actively engages the  
reader in a conversation by talking to the directly.

Cheers,
--
Gary V. Vaughan (address@hidden)