[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Fix some typos in avfilter.h

[The Wanderer]

Stefano Sabatini wrote:

> On date Sunday 2008-08-24 15:24:21 -0400, The Wanderer encoded:
> 
>> Stefano Sabatini wrote:

>>> Yes again, and I now see that my correction was outright wrong,
>>> anyway the way the sentence is formulated leads naturally to
>>> confusion, as I was reading it as:
>>> 
>>> And all the references of
>>>     a and b,
>>>     and a and b
>>> will be deallocated.
>>> 
>>> so it seemed to me just a wrong repetition, so maybe some
>>> reforumlation may improve its clearness.
>> 
>> I can see what you're talking about. It read clearly enough to me,
>> but it could certainly be made less potentially ambiguous, though
>> I'm having a hard time of coming up with a way to do it without
>> using uncommon grammatical forms - something like "Also deallocates
>> a, b, and all references thereof.", which is technically correct
>> but will seem awkward to many people.
> 
> What about
> "Also all the references of a, b, and a and b themselves will be deallocated."
> ?

Because of the nature of a comma-separated list, that expands (or could
be interpreted by a reasonable reader as expanding) to

"all the references of a"
"all the references of b"
"all the references of a and b themselves"

when what we want is

"all the references of a"
"all the references of b"
"a and b themselves"

not to mention that beginning a sentence with "Also" and not having a
comma right after it is at least awkward and may be incorrect - and
including the comma would result in a too-many-commas problem.

> For what regards the second hunk:
> "Therefore, we have the format list structure store a pointer..."
>             we have the format list structure *to* store a pointer..." 
> 
> I know both forms are used, can you tell which is the more correct?

Neither is grammatically incorrect, but the nuances of their meanings
are slightly different. I personally prefer the current form, although
the one in the patch you attached is also acceptable.

> Sorry for the nitpicking, feel free to ignore this patch if you think
> this discussion is just a timewaste.

Nitpicking over grammar is something I can spend quite a bit of time on;
I'm unlikely to get sick of it before you do, though I may not continue
to have enough time to keep it up.^_^ Note, however, that perfection in
this kind of issue can be exceedingly hard to achieve, and some might
argue that it isn't worth the effort for a simple code-documentation
comment.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.