Re: [PATCH 6/9] Slightly revise documentation of POSIX mode.

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Chet,

At 2024-12-30T12:40:48-0500, Chet Ramey wrote:
> On 12/16/24 12:48 PM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > * doc/bash.1: Introduce "POSIX mode" earlier in the document.  Set
> > the word "POSIX" in small caps (as traditionally done for acronyms)
> 
> `POSIX' is not an acronym, despite the Open Group's efforts to retcon
> it.  It's historically been just a name.

Okay.  The important point here is not what "POSIX" literally stands
for, if anything, but how it's pronounced.  Traditionally, as in 50-70
years ago, the use of small caps to typeset a word was a cue that a term
was not to be read like an initialism (USA, FBI, BBC) but as a
pronounceable word (NASA, NATO, UNICEF).  Unfortunately, practice is
much more chaotic now.[1]  Notoriously, at some point brand managers
decided that small caps looked cool and mandated their use for names
that were neither initialisms nor acronyms, including--noteworthily to
this audience--"Unix".  Full caps at any size were not the
preference of the people who built the system, but instead were a decree
by AT&T legal and/or marketing departments.[2]

> In any event, the man page uses `POSIX' to refer to the standard and
> the working group(s) and `posix mode' to refer to the shell mode
> (since you enable it using `set -o posix'). If I'm not consistent
> about that after this set of  changes, let me know.

Okay, I will review.  I have no preference for "POSIX" in regular caps
versus small caps.  Consistency is the main thing I'm looking to
achieve.  I noticed that you're not shy of small caps in the man page,
using them also for forward and backward section references, and since
`@sc{posix}` was so ubiquitous in bashref.texi I figured you didn't mind
seeing it elsewhere.

> The texinfo manual should do the same thing, but it's not consistent,
> and it uses @sc{posix} far more than it should (historical reasons in
> play there). I think I'll go for internal consistency there; the
> places where it doesn't use @sc{posix} now are mostly cut-and-paste
> jobs from other documents.

Okay.  I'll keep an eye out for the new alignment.

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://amastyleinsider.com/2012/06/06/acronym-morph-whats-an-editor-to-do/

[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2015-01/msg00029.html

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