[gentoo-dev] Re: gentoo-x86 tree cleanup for 'DESCRIPTION ends with a '.' character' warnings

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Tom Wijsman posted on Wed, 13 Aug 2014 10:38:45 +0200 as excerpted:

>> I don't recall a policy mandating that descriptions can't end with '.'.
>> I asked our QA lead about it and was told that he didn't recall that we
>> have an official policy about it either. Also, the devmanual never
>> mentions any such requirement.
> 
> It has been a common belief to drop '.' among some from what I've seen.

[Observational/skippable.]

FWIW, I've been watching this debate with some amusement, as I follow 
Language Log, which has a continuing serious covering the generational/
regional differences in period/full-stop interpretation.

The first in the series and my favorite, due to the cartoon illustrating 
the issue (Nov. 2012):

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4304

Two newer installations of the series (Nov 2013 and Aug 1, 2014, 
respectively):

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8667
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=13723


It can be a big deal for some.  Quoting from the first comment on the 
first article (and noting that what we call a "period" US-English is a 
"full stop" in UK-English):

Obviously, a period is a full stop, but, in short text messages, I feel 
like it almost SAYS full stop, with all the attendant emphasis of that 
phrase. "Best movie ever" is one thing, but "Best. Movie. Ever." is quite 
another.


Back to gentoo and the current "Much ado about nothing".  Someone's 
irritated with the periods/full-stops following short descriptions, 
because to him it's disruptive, almost as if an exclamation point (which 
I /would/ find disruptive) was used, such that for him a repoman check is 
warranted.

But to many others, it's trivial, certainly nothing worth bothering with 
a repoman check and hundreds of individual fixes with concurrent changelog 
entries.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman