Re: [PATCH] Rephrased git-describe description

[Ian Hilt <ian.hilt@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 14 May 2008 at 11:57am -0500, Kevin Ballard wrote:

> On May 14, 2008, at 9:22 AM, Ian Hilt wrote:
>> DESCRIPTION
>> -----------
>> The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a
>> -commit, and if the commit itself is pointed at by the tag, shows
>> -the tag.  Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of
>> -additional commits and the abbreviated object name of the commit.
>> +commit.  If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is
>> +shown.  Otherwise, the number of additional commits on top of the
>> +tagged object and the abbreviated object name of the most recent
>> +commit are suffixed to the tag name.
>
> I disagree that this is more readable. Specifically that last
> sentence. In the original description it tells me what it's
> doing (suffixing) before it tells me what objects it's
> using. In your version, it tells me the objects, then tells me
> what it's doing (suffixing), so I have to effectively process
> the sentence in reverse. In other words, it took me two
> readings of your last sentence to match the one reading of the
> original last sentence.

How about this?

   The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a
   commit.  If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is
   shown.  Otherwise, it suffixes to the tag name the number of
   additional commits on top of the tagged object and the
   abbreviated object name of the most recent commit.

> Also, you should use a more descriptive commit description. At the very 
> least, do something like
>
> git-describe: Make description more readable.

Something like this:

git-describe: Changed subject from commit to tag in the first
               sentence, clarified what the number of commits is
               referring to, and pointed out which object is
               referenced by the suffixed object name.

-- 
Ian Hilt
ian.hilt (at) gmail.com
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