The spelling fix backlash [LWN.net]

Development kernels typically go through a stage where half of the patches seem to be spelling fixes. Correcting misspellings is an easy way for people to help improve the code base without having to understand locking rules - or even the C language. For the most part these changes are, at worst, harmless.

2.5 seems to have inspired a more thorough than usual cleanup effort, however. People have been fixing punctuation problems, and there is even a special kernel source spellchecker out there. All this work has caused some developers to wonder if things aren't going a little too far, especially the changes start breaking things. As Alan Cox put it:

People are going to far. Fixing typos that are confusing or blatantly daft is one thing, but if you want to pick over documentation line by line with a copy of Fowlers in hand the Gnome and KDE projects would both love to have you working over their documentation and end user manuals ;)

This is a good point: very few documentation projects complain about having too many contributors. Improving documentation may not bring the satisfaction of seeing your name in the kernel changelog, but it could well be a better use of available time than correcting apostrophe errors in kernel comments.

(Log in to post comments)

The spelling fix backlash

Posted Mar 6, 2003 16:41 UTC (Thu) by StevenCole (guest, #3068) [Link]

Well, it's not "pointless work". Fixing the spelling

1) Makes the comments more readable.
2) Makes grepping more accurate.
3) Sets a good example. Some coders don't have English as their first language.
4) Removes bad examples. See above.

Discerning people's motivations from their actions is very error prone if you don't know the people involved.

Granted that a balance must be made between these kind of low priority cleanups and much greater priority real fixes.

With Dan's scripts, it should be possible for the maintainers to clean up their respective areas when it is more convenient for them.

The spelling fix backlash

Posted Mar 6, 2003 17:02 UTC (Thu) by movement (subscriber, #871) [Link]

1) - not reason enough to make life more difficult
2) - who the hell greps for "it's" ? I haven't seen a single
set of spelling fixes that would affect grep yet.
3/4) - I'm entirely sure the Linux kernel source isn't the best
place to be learning a foreign language from.

I've no objection to fixing these "in passing" when you're making
changes in the area. But all these mass changes have just been
a pain.

The spelling fix backlash

Posted Mar 6, 2003 17:22 UTC (Thu) by StevenCole (guest, #3068) [Link]

3/4) No argument about that.

Since the tree-wide changes have caused disruptions greater than the benefits which I outlined, I hope the maintainers will take the time to use Dan's scripts when the time is right for them.

Correct spelling isn't pointless

Posted Mar 7, 2003 0:45 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Dont' forget

5) Makes the code more comfortable to work with

This is probably the primary purpose the spelling-fixers have in mind, with the rest being mainly rationalization.

And it's a perfectly valid reason. Many people, especially in the computer field, have minds that are geared toward order. Reading a sentence that violates rules of grammar and typography is uncomfortable.

Washing the windows in a building where programmers work could be said to be in impractical expense, and yet pretty much all software companies do it. They know it increases the quality and decreases the cost of their product, by making the building a more comfortable place to work. Risk of breakage may well be a reasonable price to pay for clean spelling.

Correct spelling isn't pointless

Posted Mar 7, 2003 18:35 UTC (Fri) by movement (subscriber, #871) [Link]

Dear giraffedata,

Programmers do not do their work outside on the windows.

As for the guy who said that people work on the kernel
spelling because their work is not accepted elsewhere,
I find this hard to credit. If it really is true, I'd
like to see some documentary proof of this (emails, policy
statements, etc.)

Why proofreaders aren't fixing more important stuff

Posted Mar 7, 2003 0:55 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Alan hit the nail on the head. Why aren't these people sending fixes where it matters: the docs, Gnome/KDE UI, etc. ?

I'll tell you why. I'm a world class proofreader and technical editor and quite frequently want to fix things. I'd happily spend hours a day fixing documentation. But I hardly ever do. Here are some reasons:

It's hard to go to someone and say, "I noticed your writing is awful. Would you like me to fix it for you?"
Many times when I've offered, maintainers have said they would be glad to consider my changes if I submit them in whatever documentation language they're using, which is usually impractical for me.
There's a good chance if I submit fixes, they won't go anywhere because those who distribute the bad documentation are too busy doing more important things.

So the answer as to why these people are working on kernel comments is that (today) it's easy and their work is accepted.

Why proofreaders aren't fixing more important stuff

Posted Mar 9, 2003 11:45 UTC (Sun) by mathieu_lacage (subscriber, #3967) [Link]

If you really are looking for someone to take patches to their documentation, I got work for you: http://www.gnome.org/~mathieu/main.html.

My writing is horrible and even though I'd like patches to the original source xml (http://www.gnome.org/~mathieu/book-0.4.0-xml.tar.gz), I will accept comments under any format.

Experience has taught me that experienced proofreaders are not very good at working with open source documentation. Prove me wrong.

Mathieu