From: Corsair <chris.corsair@gmail.com>
To: ntg-context@ntg.nl
Subject: Re: tooltips and glossary
Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 15:42:58 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20100504194258.GA14506@Fity.uky.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <l2v54d7f5601005040632qf50952dcg55d4473e8d197821@mail.gmail.com>
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Hey Michael,
I'm the author of that terrible document.
On Tue, May 04, 2010 at 08:32:36AM -0500, Michael Saunders wrote:
> > No, it's plain English. Unfamiliar phrases are just one consequence of a
> > language becoming the world standard. Do you want to flame Italians or
> > French for not adhering to the norms of classical Latin? You don't.
> > There's no point at all in even mentioning somebody's stylistic
> > idiosyncrasies on the internets. Just face it: the world won't adopt
> > English as a global means of communication without interfering with its
> > norms. If you don't understand something why don't you contact the
> > author, his email adress is right there on the first page.
>
> I don't mind non-native speakers using bad grammar, strange usages, or
> odd constructions at all. Things like that are usually no problem for
> native speakers to understand, although the two sentences I quoted
> were not "plain English" at all---one was completely indecipherable.
> The biggest problem with the docs is far more basic---it's the most
> basic mistake a beginning writer can make. I'm sure documents like
> the ones I was shown on this thread make perfect sense to their
> authors---who already know what they mean---but they fail to
> communicate their message to anyone who doesn't already know it. The
> reader isn't being given enough information to decode the message and
> what he is given is in no particular order: it's whatever bits and
> pieces of the story the author thinks of in the order he happens to
> think of them.
I'm sorry for my writing and the inconvenience it brings. However
right now I cannot do anything about it. May be I will rewrite it
in the summer.
> You can't tell the author this. It makes sense to him and he can't
> understand the criticism. He has to put himself in the place of the
> reader who doesn't already know the message. If he can't do that, he
> can't communicate. I'm sure that these documents would be just as bad
> in the native languages of the authors as they are in English. The
> fault is far deeper than bad translation.
Actually I do understand your feeling. Like I said, I may rewrite
most part of it in the summer.
And BTW, that document is *supposed* to be an extraction of some
particular pieces of info in the official doc. Because I find the
official doc too heavy for both my PDF viewer and me. And about the
background, I just grabbed some random Asymptote file of mine. Though
I find it pretty much ok, I may change that also in the future.
Let's focus on the tooltip and external database issue you
encountered, instead of discuss that document and my bad writing :-).
--
There is no emotion; there is peace.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
There is no death; there is the Force.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-05-04 19:42 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2010-05-04 9:44 Michael Saunders
2010-05-04 12:28 ` Philipp Gesang
[not found] ` <o2i54d7f5601005040628p90c28ea6s47eab9d212acce20@mail.gmail.com>
2010-05-04 13:32 ` Michael Saunders
2010-05-04 19:04 ` Philipp Gesang
2010-05-04 19:42 ` Corsair [this message]
2010-05-04 13:07 ` Willi Egger
2010-05-04 13:34 ` Marius
2010-05-06 9:45 ` Hans Hagen
2010-05-06 10:00 ` Taco Hoekwater
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2010-05-06 11:20 Michael Saunders
2010-05-06 11:49 ` luigi scarso
2010-05-05 4:36 Michael Saunders
2010-05-05 7:02 ` Philipp Gesang
2010-05-05 7:04 ` Philipp Gesang
2010-05-05 7:04 ` Marius
2010-05-06 10:31 ` luigi scarso
2010-05-03 19:18 Michael Saunders
2010-05-03 19:21 ` Wolfgang Schuster
2010-05-04 1:40 ` Michael Saunders
2010-05-04 8:18 ` Marius
2010-05-05 6:28 ` Taco Hoekwater
2010-05-02 22:51 Michael Saunders
2010-05-03 12:26 ` Wolfgang Schuster
2010-05-03 19:09 ` Wolfgang Schuster
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