Re: [PATCH 4/4] docs: improve wording and formattin of man page of hwclock

[JWP <elseifthen@gmx.com>]

On 11/03/2014 04:15 PM, Benno Schulenberg wrote:

> Well, there are several problems with your (and also Karels) version
> of the text.  First, "automatically".  The word suggests to me that
> there is/was a way to do this unautomatically, that is: by the use of
> an option.  But is was never possible to make hwclock set the System
> Clock to a drift-compensated time without touching the Hardware Clock
> nor the adjtime file.  Second, "compensates time [...] to account for".
> The expression in English is " to compensate something /for/ a deviance" --
> there should be no "to account".  But the interposing of "read from the
> Hardware Clock" makes the use of this expression difficult to grasp.
> So it's better to rewrite the whole thing.  Third, a "the" is needed
> before "time".  Fourth, the "This functionality" referring to --adjust
> no longer being necessary during boot is awkward; it's second word
> can simply de dropped.

I do not disagree with you here. I did not want to be heavy handed when
editing Karel's words, because it is his project and I am new here. I only
wanted to make clear to the reader that the Hardware Clock itself was not
being altered.

> 
> So... my suggestion:
> 
> "Since v2.26 hwclock --hctosys does a better job at setting the System Clock:
> it no longer simply copies the time from the Hardware Clock to the System Clock,
> but it reads the Hardware Clock, applies a compensation for the systematic drift
> to this read time, and sets the System Clock to the resulting time.  Thus it is
> no longer necessary to run hwclock --adjust before doing hwclock --hctosys, and
> therefore hwclock can be used very early on in the boot process when the root
> filesystem is still read-only."
> 
> Any amendments?

Nope, that seems quite complete Benno!