Hi Russ, Le Tue, Sep 20, 2022 at 06:08:16PM -0700, Russ Allbery a écrit : > > I do find the use of paragraph the way we were previously using it to > be confusing, particularly given that the paragraphs contain fields > which in turn contain actual paragraphs in the normal sense of the > term.
> I don't want to keep using paragraph, but I'd be open to some other term > that Guillem was also open to (I think matching the terminology in dpkg is > very important). Section or block are commonly used for things like this, > but aren't very precise, so I'm not that enthused by them. In the spec, the word "paragraph" is only used in the specified context, so I always felt that there is no ambiguity. But of course, it can create opportunities for misunderstanding when discussing about the spec. So point taken about "paragraph", although interestingly, the Simple English definition of "paragraph" is quite spot on if one would replace "sentence" with "field": ”one or more sentences that are written together with no line breaks separating them. Usually they are connected by a single idea.” (<https://simple.wiktionary.org/wiki/paragraph>) The use of "paragraph" in the current spec is also consistent with Chapter 5 of the Policy, which also uses the word "paragraph". By the way, in section 5.6.26 of the Policy, the word "stanza" is also used to mean something else than a "paragraph". I do not mind the word "section". It is the term used in the manual page "systemd.syntax" that describes systemd's unit files, which means that readers may be already familiar with the concept. One could argue that its definition in Simple English (<https://simple.wiktionary.org/wiki/section>, “A section of a thing or place is a part of it”) would allow a reader to think that a Field is also a section, but I feel it is unlikely to happen. This said, one big disadvantage of "section" is that when searching for this word in a document, there may be a lot of noisy hits such as "refer to section xyz for details". I understand about avoiding ambiguity, but in my opinion it is the price to pay to be able to translate information into simple words from English to non-European languages. Although the Policy itself is not going to be translated, I think that it can be advantageous if its contents can be discussed in simple words in people's native languages. Cheers, -- Charles
