Re: [patch #4683] Spelling corrections in manual find.texi

[James Youngman]

On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 06:22:30AM -0700, Eric Blake wrote:

> According to James Youngman on 12/8/2005 12:57 AM:
> > 
> > However, I don't have an explicit policy of British spelling for the
> > document, that's just the way I spell words.  I didn't really plan to
> > standardise on UK spelling.  However, the typos did need to be corrected.  
> 
> Most GNU programs tend to standardize (or is it standardise) 

<pedant> In the UK, both are acceptable spellings, though a pedant
would say that standardize was more correct.  The -ise ending is more
common, though.  See 
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/ize?view=uk
</pedant>

> on American English instead of British English.  Nothing against the
> British (my wife is from the UK), but consistency with other GNU
> programs such as coreutils and gcc might argue that UK contributors
> put up with us brash Americans on our choice of spellings. :) But I
> didn't see anything in the GNU Coding Standards that made this
> sentiment a requirement.

Perhaps the idea didn't occur to the authors of maintain.texi.  I
wouldn't want to push the issue.  Anyway, we're teetering toward a
position statement on spelling in the findutils manual, and so here it
is: -

1. I spell things the British way, and would not be able to reliably
   spell things the American way all the time.  This means that as
   long as it is I who writes the bulk of the new documentation,
   British spellings will trickle into the document.

2. I will accept patches with spelling corrections, subject to the usual 
   restrictions on copyright assignment.  Such spelling corrections can 
   be American-English-flavored or rest-of-the-World-English-flavoured.
   Either would be accepted.

3. Contributions of useful documentation to findutils will be accepted
   in any language or dialect (subject to any requriement for a
   copyright assignment and/or waiver), though my ability to maintain
   documentation in non-European languages is nonexistent.

James.