From: Federico Vaga <federico.vaga@vaga.pv.it>
To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] doc: replace IFF abbreviation with 'if and only if'
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 15:17:29 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4450664.oKrbQx5eeJ@harkonnen> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20190910063510.GA4267@infradead.org>
On Tuesday, September 10, 2019 8:35:10 AM CEST Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 07, 2019 at 12:51:16PM +0200, Federico Vaga wrote:
> > In a normal piece of text the use of 'iff' does not guarantee a correct
> > interpretation because it is easy to confuse it for a typo (if or iff?).
> >
> > I believe that IFF should not be used outside a logical/mathematical
> > expression. For this reason with this patch I am replacing 'iff' with
> > 'if an only if' in text, and I am leaving it as it is in logical formulae.
>
> Hell no. If you want to avoid the usage in your own docs please go for
> it, but as seen in your patch we commonly use
The usage of 'iff' is as common as the usage of 'if and only if'
> and that is a good thing
> as it brings the information across in a very compact way.
It is not a piece of code that has to run on an embedded system and it needs
to be compact. It is a piece of text that people must understand.
Generally speaking compactness does not bring any value if then the text is
unclear or open to interpretation.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-09-10 13:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-09-07 10:51 [PATCH] doc: replace IFF abbreviation with 'if and only if' Federico Vaga
2019-09-10 6:35 ` Christoph Hellwig
2019-09-10 13:17 ` Federico Vaga [this message]
2019-09-11 23:24 ` Joe Perches
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