discuss: Thread: front page edited, need review :-)

http://wiki.tldp.org/FrontPage

thanks :-)
jdd
-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net

Suggestions:

- The Linux Documentation Project web site
+ The Linux Documentation Project
[redundancy]

- The Linux Documentation Project - LDP for short, or tldp
+ The Linux Documentation Project - LDP for short, or TLDP -
[consistency]

- (taken from the domain name)
+
[the story is too complicated to abbreviate here]

- It is governed by the LDP Manifesto. See here http://tldp.org/history.html LDP history.
+ It is governed by the LDP Manifesto, and has a long <url url="http://tldp.org/history.html" name="history">

- The LDP web site consists of two parts. One of them is a
+ The LDP web site consists of two parts. The first   is a

- is the wiki
+ is the Wiki
[When used specifically to reference the LDP Wiki, the term is capitalized. Also, for consistency with "HOWTO" and "Guides". Perhaps "HOWTO"s should be "How-tos".]

- This part of the site is mirrored all over the world
+ This part of the site is mirrored all over the world, and
documents there-in are generally submitted in either of the
two mark-up languages, Linuxdoc and Docbook.
[I think it is necessary to define linuxdoc and docbook here, as in the next paragraph you use them, and it shouldn't be assumed the reader knows what they are. We should probably add links to "Linuxdoc" and "Docbook".]

- This part aims to be the LDP workshop
+ The Wiki  aims to be the LDP workshop

- where new documents are written, and where old ones are updated
+ where new documents are written, and       old ones are updated

- to write in docbook/linuxdoc is allowed to do so
+ to write in Docbook/Linuxdoc may do so

- Be warned however that docs on the wiki may still be under elaboration and so not yet fully accurate.
+ Be aware , however, that the LDP Wiki is in development, and may contain inaccuracies.

- LDP users
+ LDP Users
[capitalize titles]

[This paragraph is fairly rambling. What are you saying ? Propose:]

- If you are reading this ......... see the author guide.
+ The LDP Wiki allows casual visitors to correct documents
and update content. This is the power of wikis. However, we
still need more committed people to be responsible for web
pages. You'll find more information on this in the
<url url="http://wiki.tldp.org/WikiAuthorGuide" name="author
guide">.

- If you want to be even more deeply involved and help us to manage the web site, you can become a member - see the relevant page on the blue inset on the top right of any page. Thanks!
+ If you would like to be more deeply involved, you may become a member and help manage the web site. For more information see the relevant links on the top right of any wiki page. Thanks!

:>

Steven


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On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Steven wrote:

> Suggestions:
...

Steven __

Please don't suggest -- please just DO it.  It's a wiki.  That's what it's
there for.  Instant amendment.  Online.  No messing.

There is just too much stuff to get through to present proposed amendments
to the whole group for discussion.

Please just first amend; any necessary discussion WILL arise later -- IF
required.

   "Release early and often. Constant amendment accumulates."

Cheers,
-- 
Martin Wheeler - G5FM   +44 1458 83-1103 - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
####@####.####   http://martinwheeler.net/   http://avalonit.net/
GPG pub key : 01269BEB  6CAD BFFB DB11 653E B1B7 C62B  AC93 0ED8 0126 9BEB
      - Share your knowledge. It's a way of achieving immortality. -

> Change it yourself !

Why is the page marked "immutable", when it isn't ?
... Ok, created an account and i'll make the changes, but
web time for me isn't a given.

Steve


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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
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Someone else can do it. Just tried myself, messing around with huge ugly wiki forms, only to be told some-one else has updated it.
S.



      

Steven a écrit :
> Suggestions:

given it's the home page, discussing here seems to me a good idea (for
more than typos/syntax editing).

> 
> - The Linux Documentation Project web site + The Linux
> Documentation Project [redundancy]

I changed web site to "wiki" (there are two web sites)

> 
> - The Linux Documentation Project - LDP for short, or tldp + The
> Linux Documentation Project - LDP for short, or TLDP - 
> [consistency]

don't think so. LDP are name initials, tldp is a domain name (always
low case) but?

> - is the wiki + is the Wiki [When used specifically to reference
> the LDP Wiki, the term is capitalized.

why? should we? I have no particular opinion on the subject. We have
to choose and then add consistency. Where is capitalization necessary
and where is it not?

 Also, for consistency with
> "HOWTO" and "Guides". Perhaps "HOWTO"s should be "How-tos".

AFAIK, HOWTO is usually written capitalized. Don't know why :-)

> are generally submitted in either of the two mark-up languages,
> Linuxdoc and Docbook.

wrong. documents can be (now) submitted through the wiki.

> We should
> probably add links to "Linuxdoc" and "Docbook".

for this, yes, a link is often a good idea, but to what link?
wikipedia? LDP doc? and the wiki add an icon in front of links wich
disturb reading IMHO if there are too many.

> - Be warned however that docs on the wiki may still be under
> elaboration and so not yet fully accurate. + Be aware , however, 
> that the LDP Wiki is in development, and may contain inaccuracies.

this sentence may need rewriting, but is necessary to say that the
documents are preliminary, not the wiki as itself (it is now, but
hopefully for only a short period now)

> committed people to be responsible for web pages.

LDP documents have to be more than web pages, but we also have not to
make the home page too big

thank for suggestions

jdd
NB: I already changed some parts accordingly

-- 
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Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####

> > - The Linux Documentation Project web site + The Linux
> > Documentation Project [redundancy]
> 
> I changed web site to "wiki" (there are two web sites)

There's a point of English usage I wish to call your attention to, about
that, which I'll do below.

> > - The Linux Documentation Project - LDP for short, or tldp + The
> > Linux Documentation Project - LDP for short, or TLDP - 
> > [consistency]
> 
> don't think so. LDP are name initials, tldp is a domain name (always
> low case) but?
> 
> > - is the wiki + is the Wiki [When used specifically to reference
> > the LDP Wiki, the term is capitalized.
> 
> why? should we? I have no particular opinion on the subject. We have
> to choose and then add consistency. Where is capitalization necessary
> and where is it not?

In the English language, capitalisation is required on the beginning
letter of a sentence[1], on all of the constituent initial letters of
acronyms that have not yet worn down into common nouns[2], and on the
initial letter of any proper noun.

It thus becomes important to understand what is and is not a proper noun
(as distinct from a common noun).  A proper noun is the name of a
_specific_ individual, place, or object -- the name of a particular
thing as opposed to the name of that general category of thing.  All
proper nouns get initial capitals; all common nouns do not.  That's how 
(among other thing) one tells them apart.[3]  Thus, "rolling stones" are
just loose rocks but "Rolling Stones" are a (particular) band.

Which brings me to the matter I wanted to point out.  The term "web"
refers to tangles of things including sticky extrusions from spiders'
spinning organs -- a common noun -- but the term "Web" is a proper noun
referring to a particular thing, whose longer name is the World-Wide Web.

So, unless you're talking about spider emissions, tangles of cloth, and
so on, you should not write "web" but rather "Web".  The Internet
service is properly referred to as "the Web", not as "the web".

Now, in technical writing, and especially Unix technical writing, there
are expressions that are best written in lowercase simply because that
has come to be traditional, often through association with Unix's
lowercases filenames related to them.  One example is the fact that the
ftp(1) command implements the client side of the ftp protocol, and
lynx(1) implements the client side of the HTTP protocol.  If technical
English were thoroughly systematic and logical, then both protocols
would be rendered in all-caps, because they're both acronyms.  However,
it's just not done concerning the ftp protocol.  Writing "the FTP
protocol" makes you look like an English major who's strayed into the
wrong university building and is clueless about the literary culture.

When I was writing articles for IDG's Linuxworld.com, the editors used
to consistently change my references to "the ftp protocol" to "the FTP
protocol", and I protested this change in vain.  Worse, they altered my
mentions of the command name "ftp" to "FTP", which _really_ made me look
like an idiot in print.  (However, they were paying the money, so they
got to make the rules.)

Some would argue that "web" has become a case like "ftp".  I disagree,
and assert that they're just making excuses for their own lack of
attention to literacy.  It still is jarring to encounter the expression
"the web" and realise that it's intended to refer to a proper noun --
that it's not just "the web that I cleared out of the window-frame this
morning" but _the Web_.

Unfortunately, using the shift key requires more effort than many
slightly lazy computerists will bother to exert.  Over time, this does
become a factor in hastening the wearing down of acronyms into common
nouns -- e.g., "laser" and the fact that "radar" is no longer RAdio
Detection And RAnging, either.  However, it cannot that easily convert a
proper noun into a common one, because that's a semantic distinction:
You're not talking about any old web, but rather "the Web".

You, Jean-Daniel, are among the many computerists I know who cannot be
bothered to use capitalisation most of the time.  For example, you
almost never capitalise the beginnings of sentences.  It's one thing to
do indulge this somewhat lazy habit on mailing lists, but please don't
do it in LDP's formal writings, OK?  Please?  It makes us look like
slouching teenagers.


> > Also, for consistency with "HOWTO" and "Guides". Perhaps "HOWTO"s
> > should be "How-tos".
> 
> AFAIK, HOWTO is usually written capitalized. Don't know why :-)

This would be a good case of "It's just the way it's done".  

Rule Zero of copyediting is:  Break any other rule rather than do
something peculiar with a sentence for no better reason than
rules-compliance.  HOWTOs remain HOWTOs (rather than "How-tos") because
that's just the convention.


> LDP documents have to be more than web pages

No, they have to be more than Web pages.  ;->


[1]  In technical writing and particularly writings about software, it's
common to relax this requirement, where such capitalisation would cause
ambiguity within case-sensitive namespaces.  For example, it's deemed OK
to write the sentence "rsync(1) isn't included in all Linux
distributions."

[2]  If you saw the movie "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery",
you may recall that one of the jokes about Dr. Evil is that he thinks
"laser" is still an acronym.  That was true in the 1960s whose culture
Dr. Evil is still stuck in, but, by the late 1990s, hardly anyone
remembers that the word _used_ to mean Light Amplification by Stimulated
Emission of Radiation.

[3] Other languages have different rules about this, e.g., French
doesn't consistently capitalise proper nouns, and German capitalises all
nouns, common or proper.  One can sometimes spot German speakers who have
newly learned English by the "Fact that all their Nouns seem to speak
with a heightened sense of Importance and graveness of Purpose".  (I
don't mean to mock our German-speaking friends:  It looks perfectly fine
"auf Deutsch", but really odd in English.

Rick Moen a écrit :

> In the English language, capitalisation is required on the beginning
> letter of a sentence[1], on all of the constituent initial letters of
> acronyms that have not yet worn down into common nouns[2], and on the
> initial letter of any proper noun.

same in french

> so on, you should not write "web" but rather "Web".  The Internet
> service is properly referred to as "the Web", not as "the web".

right but I feel like this is to change as most people don't
capitalize it. try to keep Web.

> You, Jean-Daniel, are among the many computerists I know who cannot be
> bothered to use capitalisation most of the time.  For example, you
> almost never capitalise the beginnings of sentences.  It's one thing to
> do indulge this somewhat lazy habit on mailing lists, but please don't
> do it in LDP's formal writings, OK?  Please?  It makes us look like
> slouching teenagers.

I stopped bothering on this *on mails* because with citations, one
does never know where a sentence begin and end. Anyway, mail and chats
and sms are not litterature but speach :-)

If I do on a more important text, it's a typo. I do zillions of typo
each day and spend a hudge time trying to fix them. I'm simply
keyboard disabled :-(. I'ts a reason why I like wikis, I can fix typo
when I see them :-)

and for titles? some people think all the title words have to be
capitalised, I usually don't but don't know what is the english rule

in french it's pretty difficult:
http://www.academie-francaise.fr/langue/questions.html#majuscules

I have the french book "Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à
l'Imprimerie nationale.". don't know if there is a similar thing in
english (online should be best)

thanks
jdd
NB: there are a lot of rules used in books but never practically used
on the Web (think at the way sentences have to be ended in lists, ";"
in fench with a   in front, pretty difficult to do. As double
space after a dot in english: do we have to do this?



-- 
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http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net

Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####

> > letter of a sentence[1], on all of the constituent initial letters of
> > acronyms that have not yet worn down into common nouns[2], and on the
> > initial letter of any proper noun.

[Rules for capitalisation:]

> same in french

Well, maybe, but, when I read French-language novels or newspapers, it
seems to me that proper nouns are often not capitalised.  I've never
been able to quite figure this out -- but it's probably way outside the
scope of LDP discussion.  (I might be confusing this matter with the
separate rules about titles, which you alluded to later on.)

> right but I feel like this is to change as most people don't
> capitalize it. try to keep Web.

Most people don't capitalise it because most people are slobs.  ;->
(I'm not talking about inconsistent and poor lettercasing in informal
writing such as mailing lists and IM, of course.  That's just
inevitable, like, as you say, typos.)

> and for titles? some people think all the title words have to be
> capitalised, I usually don't but don't know what is the english rule

The English rule is:

1. Initial letter of the first word is always capitalised.  
2. Initial letter of subsequent word is capitalised except that 
   "articles" (words like "the" and "a"/"an"), conjunctions
   ("or", "and", etc.) and prepositions (words like "of", "to", 
    "by", "for", etc.) are lowercased.

So, for example, movie titles:

  All about Eve
  The Silence of the Lambs
  Deliver Us from Evil
  Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
  On the Waterfront
  Do the Right Thing
  The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
  North by Northwest
  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 

Hollywood of course considers literacy to be non-commercial ;-> , e.g., it
considers the title of the first item to be "All About Eve".  Also, you
will see a great deal of weasel-wording about publications having a
"house style" that differs from literate usage and somehow makes that OK
(where, in reality, it's just like with IDG and the "FTP" command:  It's
the old joke about the Golden Rule:  He who has the gold gets to make
the rules).


> in french it's pretty difficult:
> http://www.academie-francaise.fr/langue/questions.html#majuscules

Ah, nostalgia!  (I studied at the Alliance Francaise in Paris.)

> NB: there are a lot of rules used in books but never practically used
> on the Web (think at the way sentences have to be ended in lists, ";"
> in fench with a   in front, pretty difficult to do. As double
> space after a dot in english: do we have to do this?

That's just a typographic convention for books that is alleged to
improve legibility.  No, we don't need to do that[1], as we're not
putting books into type -- and couldn't really do it in HTML, anyway,
even if we wanted to.

[1] You might notice that I do it in e-mails.  That's because I've tried
it both ways, and sentences really _are_ more legible with two spaces
between pairs of them.

Rick Moen a écrit :

> So, for example, movie titles:
> 
>   All about Eve

ok


> [1] You might notice that I do it in e-mails.  That's because I've tried
> it both ways, and sentences really _are_ more legible with two spaces
> between pairs of them.

I wont discuss this (its not the use in french)

jdd


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http://wiki.tldp.org
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