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Any flavour you like
Just when you thought that we were safely done with the "spelling fixes"
phase for this development series, out comes this patch changing all occurrences of
"flavour" in the kernel to "flavor." The patch, of course, drew the usual
complaints: spelling fixes are seen by many as useless code churn which breaks
things and make it hard for developers to keep their patches in sync with
the mainline. There also seems to be a special animosity aimed at anybody
who suggests that there should be a preference in the kernel between
British or American spelling.
Linus actually jumped into this conversation. He agreed that, perhaps, a variable of type rpc_authflavor_t named authflavour could be confusing, but that was the extent of it.
I think you guys who care should have a huge free-for-all, an
electronic mud-wrestling thing if you will. But not on
linux-kernel... Tell me when it's over.
For the most part, it would appear that kernel developers can continue to use whichever flavour of spelling they prefer. (Log in to post comments)
Any *flavour* you like Posted Aug 14, 2003 8:32 UTC (Thu) by stuart (subscriber, #623) [Link] Perhaps for the International audience it can be 'flavour' and for the US folks 'flavor'. Just run the preprocessor over the kernel source after you download it: something like 'make us-spelling' before a 'make menuconfig'LOL,
Any *flavour* you like Posted Aug 14, 2003 8:46 UTC (Thu) by bryn (guest, #1482) [Link] Maybe there should be an I18N module for gcc so that all spellings are automatically changed for the hacker's locale.I *am* joking, BTW. Bryn
Any *flavour* you like Posted Aug 14, 2003 19:19 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] Maybe there should be an I18N module for gcc so that all spellings are automatically changed for the hacker's locale. Nah, it should be in indent. It would fit right in with the other religious issues already present in that tool.
Any flavour you like Posted Aug 14, 2003 11:12 UTC (Thu) by cross (guest, #13601) [Link] I've never understood this obsession with decreeing one country's spelling over all others. Occasionally it flares up where I work too (where English is a foreign language). As I explain it, people speak in different accents / dialects depending on where they were brought up and naturally that tends to spill over into their writing too. It's like being told that noone with, say, a Welsh accent should be allowed to write code. Even if you dictate that only American spelling is allowable, what about issues like "lite" vs. "light"? This is a road you don't want to start down because it has no end.
Any flavour you like Posted Aug 15, 2003 3:54 UTC (Fri) by cpeterso (subscriber, #305) [Link] but it does make sense that a word should be spelled CONSISTENTLY, regardless of which ever spelling is chosen. Using multiple spellings ("flavour" and "flavor") makes grepping difficult. On LKML, Linus gave a real example of a kernel data type that includes the word "flavour", so this affects more than just comments or printfs.
Any flavour you like Posted Aug 15, 2003 17:15 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] There are some great practical arguments (previously mentioned) for picking a language for the source code and sticking with it.But it's also a perfectly valid argument that people -- many of us -- are bothered by writing that doesn't follow rules, such as by switching from one language to another randomly. We don't have to explain why it bothers us; it's an emotional thing. That's why all serious publications have detailed style guidelines that include things such as which of various spellings of a word are used.
Any flavour you like Posted Aug 14, 2003 17:45 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] How about "flava" -- short, and equally annoying to everybody.
Any flavour you like Posted Aug 15, 2003 8:09 UTC (Fri) by zmi (subscriber, #4829) [Link] How about changing it to "geschmack", the german word for flavo[u]r (though thereare several possible translations, I just picked this one). Would be annoying to both defender-groups of the english word, so maybe they see there are bigger concerns than that.
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