At 12:29 AM 11/22/00 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Is there any particular reason the spelling and punctuation in the code
>>> snippet below is so bad?
>
>> Vadim's Russian. This impacts his english but not his ability to implement
>> complex features like MVCC and WAL :)
>
>As someone who can't speak anything but English worth a damn (even
>though I was raised in Spanish-speaking countries, so you'd think
>I'd have acquired at least one clue), I have long since learned not
>to criticize the English of non-native speakers.
I think it's certain that the original poster didn't realize Vadim is not
a native English speaker, which is why I made my comment (to clue him in).
Vadim didn't take my comment as criticism, as his follow-on post made clear
(he got the joke). I don't know from your post if you thought I was adding
to the criticism or not, but I can say with certainty I wasn't. In my
previous life as the founder of a company specializing in optimizing
compilers for minicomputers, I employed Dutch (who spoke and wrote English
than I or anyone here), Polish, Vietmanese and other nationals who were
excellent hackers and who all spoke better English than I spoke their
language - or cooked their cuisine or even followed their table customs,
for that matter.
>More generally, a lot of the PG documentation could use the attention
>of a professional copy editor --- and I'm sad to say that the parts
>contributed by native English speakers aren't necessarily any cleaner
>than the parts contributed by those who are not. If you have the
>time and energy to submit corrections, please fall to!
This is very much true. PG needs some good documentation volunteers.
I'm not denigrating the current efforts, because PG documention's pretty
good all things considered. But some volunteers devoted to improving
the docs could accomplish a lot.
- Don Baccus, Portland OR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.
