[PATCH] Man page section reference should be in uppercase

[PATCH] Man page section reference should be in uppercase

[Nazri Ramliy]

From: nazri <ayiehere@gmail.com>

The advice given by git push when doing a non-fast-forward push refers
to the section 'Note about fast-forwards' in the git-push(1) man page.

The section name should really be all in uppercase, as in 'NOTE ABOUT
FAST-FORWARDS' because that is how it is shown by git push --help.

Signed-off-by: Nazri Ramliy <ayiehere@gmail.com>
---
 builtin/push.c |    4 ++--
 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/builtin/push.c b/builtin/push.c
index f4358b9..0694200 100644
--- a/builtin/push.c
+++ b/builtin/push.c
@@ -130,8 +130,8 @@ static int push_with_options(struct transport *transport, int flags)
 
 	if (nonfastforward && advice_push_nonfastforward) {
 		fprintf(stderr, "To prevent you from losing history, non-fast-forward updates were rejected\n"
-				"Merge the remote changes before pushing again.  See the 'Note about\n"
-				"fast-forwards' section of 'git push --help' for details.\n");
+				"Merge the remote changes before pushing again.  See the 'NOTE ABOUT\n"
+				"FAST-FORWARDS' section of 'git push --help' for details.\n");
 	}
 
 	return 1;
-- 
1.7.1.rc1.21.gf3bd6

Re: [PATCH] Man page section reference should be in uppercase

[Dévai Tamás]

2010. 05. 25, kedd keltezéssel 11.01-kor Nazri Ramliy ezt írta:
> From: nazri <ayiehere@gmail.com>
> 
> The advice given by git push when doing a non-fast-forward push refers
> to the section 'Note about fast-forwards' in the git-push(1) man page.
> 
> The section name should really be all in uppercase, as in 'NOTE ABOUT
> FAST-FORWARDS' because that is how it is shown by git push --help.
> 

I don't really agree with this, but it might be only my personal
preference. Reasons:

The section title in the man page is "typeset" in a "different font" to
be easily distinguishable from the surrounding text -- therefore it's
all capital. On the other hand, changing the reference in the advice
given by git-push to be all uppercase will give a needless emphasis on
the referred section title. This is wrong IMHO, because the main point
of the advice is not this reference, but the earlier sentences (i.e. the
push was rejected).

> Signed-off-by: Nazri Ramliy <ayiehere@gmail.com>
> ---
>  builtin/push.c |    4 ++--
>  1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/builtin/push.c b/builtin/push.c
> index f4358b9..0694200 100644
> --- a/builtin/push.c
> +++ b/builtin/push.c
> @@ -130,8 +130,8 @@ static int push_with_options(struct transport *transport, int flags)
>  
>  	if (nonfastforward && advice_push_nonfastforward) {
>  		fprintf(stderr, "To prevent you from losing history, non-fast-forward updates were rejected\n"
> -				"Merge the remote changes before pushing again.  See the 'Note about\n"
> -				"fast-forwards' section of 'git push --help' for details.\n");
> +				"Merge the remote changes before pushing again.  See the 'NOTE ABOUT\n"
> +				"FAST-FORWARDS' section of 'git push --help' for details.\n");
>  	}
>  
>  	return 1;

Fwd: [PATCH] Man page section reference should be in uppercase

[Nazri Ramliy]

I forgot to reply to the list as well when sending the (now forwarded)
message below.

Apparently only Dévai Tamás received it, and replied to me:

Dévai Tamás wrote to me:
> I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing out.

Apology for the top-posting-ish nature of this email.

I guess when forwarding an email verbatim, it's ok to top post it with a
header of some sort?

nazri.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nazri Ramliy <ayiehere@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, May 26, 2010 at 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Man page section reference should be in uppercase
To: Dévai Tamás <devait@vnet.hu>


On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 2:45 AM, Dévai Tamás <devait@vnet.hu> wrote:
> I don't really agree with this, but it might be only my personal
> preference. Reasons:
>
> The section title in the man page is "typeset" in a "different font" to
> be easily distinguishable from the surrounding text -- therefore it's
> all capital. On the other hand, changing the reference in the advice
> given by git-push to be all uppercase will give a needless emphasis on
> the referred section title. This is wrong IMHO, because the main point
> of the advice is not this reference, but the earlier sentences (i.e. the
> push was rejected).

Keeping the reference to be in lowercase goes against what is
currently practiced the man pages of git commands.  Have a look at the
output of

       $ git grep '"[A-z ]\+" section'

See how all of them use all-caps when referring to man page sections.

If the user is already familiar with the non-fast-forward push issue,
they would know how to proceed and ignored the 'needless' emphasis.

But for a user who is clueless about the non-fast-forward push issue the
emphasis is good and even more important than that is that it is
spelled out in the same exact form as how it will be rendered when the
user run 'git push --help', IMHO.

nazri.

Re: Fwd: [PATCH] Man page section reference should be in uppercase

[Junio C Hamano]

Nazri Ramliy <ayiehere@gmail.com> writes:

>        $ git grep '"[A-z ]\+" section'
>
> See how all of them use all-caps when referring to man page sections.

"TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" and "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" are shown quite often, but
there are some others that deviate from your "all caps" norm.  For
example, 'see the "Configuration Mechanism" section' appears in git.txt
and it matches how the section header that is referred to is spelled.

Also the section headers referred to in caps in the current documentation
set are indeed spelled in caps (grep for "TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" in
Documentation/git-init.txt for example).

Having said that, I wouldn't mind if the theme of your improvement were to
spell manual section *headers* in caps, instead of leaving the actual
section names still spelled as "Note about fast-forwards" and upcasing
only the reference(s) to it, which can make things inconsistent depending
on how the documentation is typeset (e.g. I read the documentation source
as text files).  Obviously the resulting patchset may also have to upcase
e.g. "combined diff format" section header to bring consistency into the
whole documentation set, not just the "Note about fast-forwards" section.