Subject: Re: So now you're a BigShot now? (clarification re. "MinGW Glib")
From: Soren A <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 20:33:05 +0000 (UTC)

"Francois de Campagnolle" <[email-masked]> wrote in
news:001801c267eb$ffb7b440$58c00d50@exostation: 

> Don't be so lengthy if you want to make your point, especially on
> mailing lists where we have tons of mails to deal with every day. It's
> not a style contest (hopefully).

I didn't really ask for feedback on the length of the post, or its
style. FYI, the post is going to be made semi-permanent on Kuro5hin
(www.kuro4hin.org), maybe.

But just in answer to your unsolicited critique about the posting
length: the "point" I am making requires not much less than the number
of words I used. 

It is interesting to note that both complaints about the length (not the
substance or meaning, but simply the length) came from non-native
English participants in this List. As a matter of fact, I find Corinna's
parts of the Cygwin FAQ (that she's authored) generally incomprehensible
and incomplete -- confusing and misleading (to the point that it once a
while back caused an off-list tussle between myself and one very good
fellow here because I was laboring under a miscomprehension caused by
misleading words in the FAQ). Basically the problem is that the parts of
the FAQ she's authored are too *un*verbose. 

There is a profound connection between your sniping about the length of
the article and my article itself. As somebody noted to me in a private
reply to my post, people at his project started using Autotools in their
build configuration some time back, and *really* hate them. But he
thinks what they hate isn't just the Autotools themselves but the _size
of the problem domain_ and how transparent that size is when using the
Autotools (IOW the Autotools exist to address a "problem domain" that is
large, and are rather transparent in their functioning so that the
extent of the problem [cross-platform portability issues] isn't
well-hidden from the user). 

The point is that yours and Corinna's complaint about the length of my
article is an example of ignoring the true magnitude of the "problem
domain". The problem's true nature really is that (fortunately, and I
wouldn't want it any other way) contributors to Cygwin here are from
diverse international backgrounds and yet we all have to use a common
human language to express more difficult, non-code ideas -- English --
that is a big struggle to those not raised with it as their native
language. Neither you nor Corinna "owned up" (were fully honest about or
demonstrated awareness of) the true nature of the "problem domain" --
what you found objectionable, unwelcome or difficult about my article. 

Until we have truly accurate and powerful machine translation from one
human language to others, this is going to go on being a problem. One
doesn't make a problem go away by ignoring it feigning ignorance of its
true nature. I submit that the immediate solution is *not*, however,
that I, as a native English speaker, should dumb-down my posting (an
extraordinary one, unusually broad and abstract in its topic) because
some readers here have a handicap with reading written English. Is it?
Should Francophone peoples be forced to abandon traditional French
idioms and phrasings and substitute them with imported (borrowed)
English ones? The French seem to feel emphatically "no" as they have
written a law onto their books concerning this. 

I claim it is my right to use my native language to the full power of my
expressive ability *when the topic demands it* and not to be required by
List coercion (rules, peer pressure) to hold back or use only short
words and phrases in short articles. I claim that if a French person
implies I should do otherwise, there's a double standard being applied
there at the very least.  

Food for thought.

   Soren A

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