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Re: typo in frame.el


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: typo in frame.el
Date: 10 Apr 2004 01:17:06 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3.50

"Drew Adams" <address@hidden> writes:

> Here's what I wrote earlier:
> 
> > At the very worst, someone unacquainted with the meaning of "iff"
> > will likely interpret it as "if" (and as an benign typo), so there
> > is no harm done in using it: (the most important) half of its
> > meaning is always conveyed.

That's different from what I wrote: I said that
non-matheticians/programmers/logicians use "if" in the meaning "iff"
more often than otherwise, so they get more than half of its meaning.

Anyway, in this case, the doc string is unclear anyway.

It should be

Turn cursor blink mode on if ARG is positive, off otherwise.

The problem is that the "iff" merely implies "Don't turn cursor blink
mode on if ARG is not positive" but that's different from turning it
off.  A programmer will probably make the right connection because it
is cool to do so, but a true mathematician will still get confused by
this wannabe mathematician jingo.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum




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