A few more clerical patches, relative to 7217d26487456e93094be4c3befb6cdccfdc7bcc, dated Wed Aug 13 11:46:39 2014 -0700. 0001 fixes up some more minor spacing issues missed in my last round of patches on 2014-08-09. 0002 fixes another typo in recent additions to NEWS, and adds a space after the redirection operator in the new CONTRIBUTING file for added clarity. 0003 renames the fields of Link lines to be more descriptive and more like the parameters of 'ln'. (Personally, I have found LINK-FROM and LINK-TO to be the opposite of my expectations, and these are not particularly descriptive names anyway.) 0004 standardizes Link lines to use single tabs. These can be compared at https://github.com/timparenti/tz-experimental/compare/eggert:master...timpar... -- Tim Parenti
Thanks, some thoughts: 1. Lines should ordinarily be at most 80 columns. 2. The header "Link TARGET LINK-NAME" is problematic. First, the terminology isn't clear unless one already knows what Link does. It's easy for a non-expert to misunderstand TARGET to be the link you're trying to build (which it isn't) and LINK-NAME to be the name that you're trying to put into the link (which it's not). The best way to understand the Link directive is to know that it's inspired by the Unix ln command. If you know that, it's clear; if not, the header's not going to save you. Second, let's not bother trying to make the Link columns line up nicely with tabs. They often line up nicely anyway (e.g., all those links from America/Port_of_Spain) and tabs just consume valuable horizontal space. And when they don't always line up (as in 'backward') making them line up puts the columns too far apart anway. In hindsight perhaps we should have just used single spaces in 'backward'. 3. I prefer not having space after '>' in a shell I/O redirection. It's just a style thing, but it's the style in tzselect.ksh. For non-experts, this style makes it clearer that we're not talking greater-than. 4. I'm not a fan of "# Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL]" comments all over the place: they consume screen real estate with little benefit. as those columns are reasonably clear without it. (This is less true for Rule lines.) I've left these comments in existing files for the sake of stability, but in the new file 'backzone' I'd like to try omitting them before each zone. One such comment at the start of the file should be enough. So, how about the attached patch set instead? (I haven't pushed it.)
On Wed, 13 Aug 2014, Tim Parenti wrote:
0001 fixes up some more minor spacing issues missed in my last round of patches on 2014-08-09.
0002 fixes another typo in recent additions to NEWS, and adds a space after the redirection operator in the new CONTRIBUTING file for added clarity.
I think the descriptions for 0001 and 0002 above are swapped. I would prefer that neatly aligned comments at the ends of lines, like these: # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Africa/Asmara 2:35:32 - LMT 1870 2:35:32 - AMT 1890 # Asmara Mean Time 2:35:20 - ADMT 1936 May 5 # Adis Dera MT remain as they are, and not be changed to unaligned forms like these, which I find harder to read: # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Africa/Asmara 2:35:32 - LMT 1870 2:35:32 - AMT 1890 # Asmara Mean Time 2:35:20 - ADMT 1936 May 5 # Adis Dera MT (I expanded tabs in the pasted code above)
0004 standardizes Link lines to use single tabs.
Why? It's much easier to read if the tabs are used to to make the columns line up nicely (in a display that's configured for one tab every 8 columns, in the traditional way), and that sometimes needs more than one tab. --apb (Alan Barrett)
On 14 August 2014 03:31, Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com> wrote:
I think the descriptions for 0001 and 0002 above are swapped.
Yes, that was my mistake; the cover letter was from a previous rebase; I had swapped the order afterward and forgot to change the message accordingly. On 14 August 2014 01:08, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
Lines should ordinarily be at most 80 columns.
I'm well aware, as you'll recall I submitted a few 80-column fixes last week; however, this restriction becomes a bit more nebulous when tab characters are involved. Nonetheless, I've tried to fix this up in the forthcoming reroll. On 14 August 2014 03:31, Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com> wrote:
It's much easier to read if the tabs are used to to make the columns line up nicely (in a display that's configured for one tab every 8 columns, in the traditional way), and that sometimes needs more than one tab.
On the contrary, tabs shouldn't be used for alignment. I agree, though, that it's nicer to have things line up, so I've endeavored to use spaces for that in the forthcoming reroll. On 14 August 2014 01:08, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
The best way to understand the Link directive is to know that it's inspired by the Unix ln command. If you know that, it's clear; if not, the header's not going to save you.
Then let's just put one "# Link" header in backward. Reroll forthcoming... -- Tim Parenti
Attached is a reroll of the earlier patchset, still relative to 7217d26487456e93094be4c3befb6cdccfdc7bcc, dated Wed Aug 13 11:46:39 2014 -0700. 0001 is the one remaining typo fix to NEWS. 0002 contains the spacing fixes, redone. 0003 adds a "# Zone" comment to backzone. 0004 renames the Link line fields in commentary and adds one "# Link" header to backward. These can be compared at https://github.com/timparenti/tz-experimental/compare/eggert:master...timpar... -- Tim Parenti
With the actual attachments this time. On 14 Aug 2014 15:19, Tim Parenti wrote:
Attached is a reroll of the earlier patchset, still relative to 7217d26487456e93094be4c3befb6cdccfdc7bcc, dated Wed Aug 13 11:46:39 2014 -0700.
0001 is the one remaining typo fix to NEWS. 0002 contains the spacing fixes, redone. 0003 adds a "# Zone" comment to backzone. 0004 renames the Link line fields in commentary and adds one "# Link" header to backward.
These can be compared at https://github.com/timparenti/tz-experimental/compare/eggert:master...timpar...
-- Tim Parenti
Thanks. A quick look at the 2nd patch says that this proposal still introduces many lines more than 80 columns; can you please fix this? For example, the very first change introduces a line for Africa/Algiers that is 83 columns. A couple of other things: if the comment can say "Mean Time" instead of "MT", it's better to do that than to have the columns line up. Likewise for "Time" instead of "T". And I don't see why there needs to be a separate line for "# Davis Time". When in doubt, just leave the lines alone. I pushed the first patch into the experimental repo on github, since it's OK and that'll save us both work.
Thanks for applying 0001, Paul. For the rest, attached is reroll v3, now relative to 3b64b02631fea40759a9004a868fc4cfa86f3a35, dated Wed Aug 13 13:31:11 2014 -0400. I've moved up these two, since they don't seem to have any remaining issues: 0002 adds a "# Zone" comment to backzone. 0003 renames the Link line fields in commentary, adds one "# Link" header to backward, and a few "# Zone" headers that you left. I realized the proposed spacing changes were actually a conflation of two issues, so I've separated them out: 0004 finishes up spacing changes *within* the UNTIL fields, begun in my earlier patch from 2014-08-09. 0005 adjusts alignment for end-of-line comments within Zones, with extra care to avoid 80-column issues (assuming 8-space tabs). There are a few Zones which would be touched by both 0004 and 0005; these have been touched in 0004 for simplicity. This did not cause any changes to commentary. For 0005, I preferred to start comments where the time-of-day would start, or after the smallest time unit used for the Zone, if larger; comments were only placed after a time-of-day if absolutely necessary. Regardless, they were moved to the next largest unit, if possible, to still fit within 80 columns. This process still resulted in a few minor commentary changes: * antarctica (Antarctica/Casey, Antarctica/Mawson): Bring Casey and Mawson comments inline, like Davis. * asia (Asia/Baku): Capitalize "T" in "Time". * europe (Europe/Riga): Rework comments that can't fit in 80 columns. (Atlantic/Canary): Change "Canaries Time" to "Canaries T" to fit. * northamerica (Pacific/Honolulu): Remove inline comments, as the sources are already well-documented above. * southamerica (Pacific/Easter): Change "Easter I Time" to "Easter Is T", which fits and is more consistent with other nearby comments. These can be compared at https://github.com/timparenti/tz-experimental/compare/eggert:master...timpar... -- Tim Parenti
Thanks, I installed those with some minor changes and pushed the result into the experimental version on github. I changed one comment to say "Easter Time", since there wasn't room to say "Easter Island Time", and the draft substitute "Easter Is T" incorrectly connoted an island chain. ("Easter Time" is clear in context.)
participants (3)
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Alan Barrett -
Paul Eggert -
Tim Parenti