Re: [gentoo-dev] ekeyword and ordering

[foser <foser@gentoo.org>]

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On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 14:46 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> foser wrote:	[Sat Jun 11 2005, 04:15:22AM EDT]
> > Arch keywords are concepts and as such may not primarily be dealt as
> > a an alphabetical list but as words in a sentence, there is no abc
> > order in sentences.
> 
> Foser, no offense intended, but you started out in this thread making
> a couple good points.  However this is completely off the wall.  The
> KEYWORDS list isn't a sentence.

The post I replied to was full of far-fetched reasoning, I just made a
similar post.

> > If you have to search, you'll have
> > to scan anyway, exact position is not a guarantee for certainty because
> > not every pack is available on every arch, it's not like you can go
> > without scanning.
> 
> Doesn't change the point that scanning in alpha order is easier than
> scanning append order.
> 
> > Last, this only holds to some extent true for people
> > in countries with alphabetic scripts, outside that limited part of the
> > globe people are not as proficient in ordering alphabetically.
> 
> AFAIK, all Gentoo developers are fluent English speakers, even if for
> some it isn't their first language.

Fluent, right. Try some of the cjk people. Not really. Anyway, it
doesn't matter, if you didn't grown up with the alphabet, you really
don't know the ordering by heart like western people do. In spoken
language it doesn't matter what the order is, it is totally arbitrary.
Also, realistically it's probably only 1st language for maybe half of
the devs these days.

> > A certain amount of uncertainty in order actually might prove to be
> > effective in having everyone who deals with keywords actually really
> > check all keywords and not depend on assumptions, which both 'error'
> > cases you mention seem to be caused by.
> 
> Maintaining a behavior that encourages mistakes, in hopes that the
> extra effort required will prevent those mistakes?  This cannot
> possibly be a good approach...

You assume here suddenly that it encourages mistakes, there is no such
evidence presented here or ever was, there is however evidence to the
contrary where the continues shifting of orders (within packages) caused
problems (the thing I disliked about this whole situation to begin
with). I actually suggest that the opposite might be true, a certain
degree of uncertainty (between packages) prompts caution and might prove
to be more error-free. Sure it's all a bit far fetched, but so was the
post that suggested that there was some grand ergonomic idea behind this
arbitrary change.

I did not in this thread challenge the ordering (who made that up?), I
challenged the way it got 'introduced'. I just got ticked off by the
'scientific basis' that suddenly was presented as the big reason behind
it.

To recap, it was the arbitrary /ordering change/ of a select group of
individuals that created problems within packages, not the one or the
other /order/.

- foser

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