Re: [PATCH 01/10] fanotify_init.2: tfix

[Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>]

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Hi Branden, Jakub,

On 8/21/22 07:28, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> At 2022-08-20T01:28:04+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>>> -capability to create and intialize an fanotify group with limited functionality.
>>> +capability to create and initialize an fanotify group with limited functionality.
>>
>> should this be 'a fanotify' instead of 'an fanotify'?
> 
> Answering this requires people to document how the function/feature name
> is supposed to be pronounced.  Use "an" if what follows is a vowel
> sound.  Spelling is not a determining factor.
> 
> Unfortunately it is a tradition in Unix culture not to make
> pronouciation of its lexicon of (historically) hermetically terse
> identifier lexicon clear, so that the names of commands and functions
> that are well known enough to come up in conversation at conventions can
> be used a shibboleth to distinguish self-taught users and programmers
> (and clueless sales personnel and would-be entrepreneurs) from
> "authentic" Unix experts who underwent a proper apprenticeship, and
> through a chain of masters, can trace their tutelage to a luminary at
> the Bell Labs CSRC or UC Berkeley CSRG--someone with a name to be spoken
> in hushed tones like "Ritchie" or "Joy".
> 
> Does "troff" have one syllable or two?  Does one refer to the text
> editors as "ee-dee" and "vee-eye" or as if they were English diminutive
> names "Ed" and "Vi"?  One set of choices will mark you as a person who
> _might_ be worth conversing with; the other will get you a short look
> down a long nose and the cold shoulder.  We've got gates to keep.

You can guess the answers to those in my head ;)

> 
> Both Unix and the Linux kernel, the latter particularly in its
> development model, were levelling technologies.  They brought better OS
> technology and programming environments to much larger groups of people
> than had enjoyed them before.
> 
> But it is a sadly recurring theme of human history that as soon as some
> levelling process occurs, a certain type of person promptly moves in to
> restore a guild, caste, or other hierarchical social ordering that they
> are more comfortable with.
> 
> If you can't get an authoritative answer from a principal author of the
> fanotify API, I suggest reading the term as "eff-A-notify";

Ahh, makes sense now.  It hadn't occured to me that that was a possible 
pronounciation.  Anyway, it'll always be fa-notify in my head.  I'm 
waiting for sol-notify, which will be pronounced exactly as fanotify, 
but a tone higher :D

> this will
> then be implicitly documented by your choice of the article "an".

I was trying to come up with possible pronounciations that would have a 
vowel at the begining, but then I thought: no, who would pronounce this 
as f-a-notify?  It's too much work!  Heh!

>  It
> doesn't have anything to do with fans or the fourth degree of the major
> scale, after all.

Cheers,

Alex

P.S.: Patch applied.


-- 
Alejandro Colomar
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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