Mail Archives: cygwin/2006/10/29/10:52:00
This is my last posting on this. My suggestion is that the "reboot"
message that appears sometimes when you update CygWin, and you have a
CygWin process running, be changed to either "reboot Windows" or
"restart Windows" (the latter is the preferred terminology in the
Microsoft world, from what I have seen in other programs and at
Microsoft's website, although I didn't see any recommendation per se).
Brian Dessent wrote:
> It would never have occured to me in a million years that "reboot" means
> anything except actually rebooting the computer. Do people regularly
> make up arbitrary definitions for other computer terms?
Most of us don't look in the dictionary to find out what computer
terms--or any other words--mean. I would guesstimate that you learned
99% of your vocabulary, computer or otherwise, without looking it up.
So by that count, 99% of the words we know are our own arbitrary
definitions, made up by observing how words are used, or occasionally by
having someone tell you what a word means (and they probably learned it
the same way).
Me, I learned "reboot" when I was operating a Cyber 170/750. It meant
(IIRC) lifting a little door and operating a switch, at which point the
computer referred to the settings of a wall full of toggle switches for
the first few instructions to follow. I'm sure I never looked the word
up in a dictionary.
Besides, times change, but usage changes more slowly. When I was in the
Navy, the term for starting up any piece of equipment, be it a boiler or
a computer, was "fire it up." I assure you that even in those days, no
one lit a fire under the (analog) computer to start it, despite the
words we used. So it's not inconceivable in these days of Windows,
virtual OSs, etc., that we might use the term 'reboot' to mean s.t.
other than completely restarting the computer.
Also, remember that not everyone using CygWin is a geek, nor a native
speaker of English. Why not make the msg clear to non-initiates?
> And if you close all running Cygwin apps and services as recommended,
As you will have guessed from reading this far, I'm old enough that it's
quite possible my memory is fading. But I don't recall seeing any msg
from the setup program telling me to close any running Cygwin apps or
services. That would be a good addition, I suspect. (I'm not familiar
with DLL programming, but wouldn't it be quite easy for setup to tell
whether Cygwin is running before the update starts, and tell the user to
shut it down?)
OK, I just went through the update process. Unless I need new reading
glasses, there really was no such recommendation.
--
Mike Maxwell
maxwell AT umiacs DOT umd DOT edu
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