From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <91a834f68df7b1af7de479b2062c27d7@terzarima.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Capitalization in man pages. 
From: Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net>
Date: Tue,  6 Dec 2005 18:11:03 +0000
In-Reply-To: <200512061430.aa89515@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
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>> the typeset pages.)  But the unwritten style guide for BSD man pages  
>> says function names (and almost everything else) are case preserved.
>> 
>> --lyndon
> 
> Are you sure?  I just looked at Rob's example, qsort(3), on my FreeBSD
> system.  It mostly follows his usage, but there was
> 
>   Mergesort() is optimized for data with pre-existing order

actually, the amusing thing for me is that most pages in plan 9's section 2
use the latter style: Open opens, Create creates, Lalloc allocates a Layer,
Read reads, Write writes, Seek sets an offset, and so on.  Qsort sorts an array.
few pages use `the function ...', although some do when it makes sense.
outside section 2, Cat reads each file, Clock draws a clock, ...

one can see why, when there are many functions.
with the `Lalloc allocates' style, the function name is often the start
of a paragraph describing the function.  when several are
discussed in one paragraph, and a function name is just the start of a line not a paragraph, the
capital helps it stand out from the preceding sentence.

of course, i don't write my own throwaway e-mail following any of those conventions!
i'm anyway currently stuck in a grim world of
public abstract SocketChannel extends java.nio.channels.spi.AbstractSelectableChannel
implements ByteChannel, GatheringByteChannel, ScatteringByteChannel
where clearly no names are used lightly; and there are many.