Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Path: not-for-mail From: Soren A Subject: Re: So now you're a BigShot now? (clarification re. "MinGW Glib") Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 20:33:05 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Sporadically, Occasionally Lines: 69 Message-ID: References: <20020929100813 DOT A23577 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <001801c267eb$ffb7b440$58c00d50 AT exostation> NNTP-Posting-Host: 248.syracuse-01-02rs.ny.dial-access.att.net X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1033331585 25745 12.89.0.248 (29 Sep 2002 20:33:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet AT main DOT gmane DOT org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 20:33:05 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Xnews/5.04.25 X-Archive: encrypt "Francois de Campagnolle" wrote in news:001801c267eb$ffb7b440$58c00d50 AT 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 -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/