Aldo Cortesi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thus spake Steven D'Aprano ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > > Perhaps you aren't aware that doing something "by eye" is idiomatic > > English for doing it quickly, roughly, imprecisely. It is the opposite of > > taking the time and effort to do the job carefully and accurately. If you > > measure something "by eye", you just look at it and take a guess. > > Well, Steve, speaking as someone not entirely unfamiliar with idiomatic > English, I can say with some confidence that that's complete and utter > bollocks (idomatic usage for "nonsense", by the way). To do something "by > eye" means nothing more nor less than doing it visually. Unless you can > provide a citation to the contrary, please move on from this petty little > point of yours, and try to make a substantial technical argument instead.
I can't find any reference for Steven's alleged idiomatic use of "by eye", either -- _however_, my wife Anna (an American from Minnesota) came up with exactly the same meaning when I asked her if "by eye" had any idiomatic connotations, so I suspect it is indeed there, at least in the Midwest. Funniest, of course, is that the literal translation into Italian, "a occhio", has a similiar idiomatic meaning to _any_ native speaker of Italian -- and THAT one is even in the Italian wikipedia!-) I'll be the first to admit that this issue has nothing to do with the substance of the argument (on which my wife, also my co-author of the 2nd ed of the Python Cookbook and a fellow PSF member, deeply agrees with you, Aldo, and me), but natural language nuances and curios are my third-from-the-top most consuming interest (after programming and... Anna herself!-). [[_Visual inspection_ plays a crucial role in many areas of engineering, of course; for example, visual inspection of welds is a very reliable, although costly, quality assurance process, particularly if you ensure that the inspectors hold the top professional degrees from the American Welding Society (if you're operating in the USA:-)]]. Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list