[GRASS-dev] Unable/Can not wording (was: Re: [GRASS-CVS] carlos: grass6/raster/r.his main.c, 2.6, 2.7)

[Brad Douglas]

On Sat, 2007-07-07 at 00:48 +0100, Paul Kelly wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Jul 2007, Brad Douglas wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 14:33 +0200, Martin Landa wrote:
> >> Ciao Carlos,
> >>
> >> I am not sure too (it is the question for native speakers...)
> >>
> >> http://www.nabble.com/message-standardization-on-wiki-tf3559274.html#a9939189
> >>
> >> "Cannot open raster map" X "Unable to open raster map"
> >
> > There is no issue with tense here.
> >
> > I prefer "Unable to".  It's negative without being so forcefully
> > negative (if that makes any sense).  Either will work, but I believe
> > there are fewer cases of "Cannot..." than "Unable to..." in source.
> 
> I'm just replying to make the point how there really seems to be no 
> difference between the two forms: I disagree with the above and feel 
> "unable to" sounds much more harsh and formal than "can not", "cannot" or 
> "can't", which IMHO correspond more with every day speech. But perhaps 
> there is a American/European English difference here. In which case given 
> GRASS's roots the American is probably the way to go I guess? Are there 
> any languages into which, when translated, the two phrases mean something 
> substantially different?

Correct, that there is essentially no different.  For me, it's a matter
of flow, rather than flipping a coin.

Contractions are EVIL and should not be used.  That includes "cannot"
and "can't".  Those are both out.  We're left with "Can not".  I don't
like it because it negates a positive, but that's my personal choice.

I could care less which of the two gets used, as long as it is
consistent.

> In any case I think it is clearer if error messages like these (resulting 
> from filesystem errors) are augmented where possible with the system error 
> message from strerror(errno()) - see e.g. in lib/gis/copy_file.c:
>          G_warning( "Cannot open %s for reading: %s", infile,
>                     strerror(errno) );

See above.

> Here's a thought - to me, "unable to" suggests that the reason why 
> something could not be done is outside GRASS's control, and perhaps would 
> suit the above example from G_copy_file() better than "cannot" as the 
> reason (the system error message) is presented after the GRASS error. 
> Whereas perhaps "cannot" suggests that's simply all there is to it and 
> the program is unable to go into any more depth on what caused the error.
> i.e.
> "unable to": error/warning caused by something outside GRASS; say what it 
> is
> "cannot": error/warning is something within GRASS that genuinely isn't 
> possible.

> But I'm really splitting hairs here, trying to justify why we have the two 
> forms in GRASS. But perhaps it isn't possible to justify that...

Maybe we should put it to a vote, even though it is a mundane issue.
Both are acceptable choices...it's just a matter of choosing one and not
looking back.


-- 
73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 <rez touchofmadness com>