Re: [Qemu-devel] [Qemu-trivial] [PATCH] Fix typo in code and comments

[Stefan Weil <weil@mail.berlios.de>]

Am 26.04.2011 19:04, schrieb Jan Marten Simons:
> Am Dienstag 26 April 2011 11:25:58 schrieb Stefan Hajnoczi:
>> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Stefan Weil <weil@mail.berlios.de> 
>> wrote:
>>> Replace writeable -> writable
>>
>> Why make this change? writeable and writable are both commonly used
>> spellings.
>
> It seems like "writeable" is the commonly used term in computer 
> sciences and
> "writable" is the normal english adjective formed from "to write" + 
> "-able" in
> general English.[1]
>
> As we are refering to computer science related "writeable" it should 
> be left
> as is imho. But as I'm no native speaker, you might feel different on 
> this.
> On a side note: Samba offers both spellings as valid for thier 
> configuration
> files. [2]
>
> [1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/writeable
> [2] http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=22258.0
>
> With regards,
>
> Dipl. Phys.
> Jan M. Simons
>
> Institute of Crystallography
> RWTH Aachen University

Commonly used is not necessarily correct.

The Oxford dictionary only accepts writable (even when I select
american english). Same result with Merriam-Webster.
Google suggests writable instead of writeable.

I see "writeable" only in computer programs and related contexts,
therefore I assume that it is simply a very common spelling error
contributed by non-native speakers (like myself). Interesting
detail: The spelling checker of my mailing client (Icedove) marks
writeable as correct and writable as wrong (which is obviously wrong).
Maybe I should send a bug report to Debian.

The ratio of writeable:writable in unpatched qemu is 37:47.
Even if both writings were correct, I might argue that a
uniform spelling is better and choose the form which is more commonly
used.

Let's improve the spelling for computer programs a little bit!