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Re: delete-other-frames


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: delete-other-frames
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 10:40:29 +0300

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> cc: address@hidden
> Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 21:32:57 -0400
> 
>   >   This function deletes the frame @var{frame}.
> 
> The latter is the grammatically correct way.  A parameter name in
> italics, such as "@var{frame}", acts as a _name_ that refers to the
> actual value of the argument.

(In Info files, the parameter is just up-cased, it isn't in italics.)

If the name of the argument is different, I don't object to the latter
form, provided that it has the comma.  But when it is the same word,
the result reads as incorrect English, especially when there's no
comma between them, as things usually stand.

> Just as we would write
> 
>   Send it to my assistant, Jeanne.
> 
> we should write,
> 
>   delete the frame, @var{f}.
> 
> or
> 
>   delete the frame, @var{frame}.

But

  Send it to my assistant ASSISTANT.

and

  delete the frame FRAME

don't sound right to me.  The speller even highlights them as
mis-spellings, because it flags repeated adjacent words.  (It doesn't
when there's a comma between them.)

An additional advantage of my proposal is that it goes well with the
style we use in the doc strings, because the form I proposed is
shorter.

In any case, we have quite a few of instances in our documentation
that use the form I proposed, so if we really think it's incorrect (I
don't agree), we have to change them all first.



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