From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 27965 invoked by alias); 13 Feb 2015 16:15:40 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 27889 invoked by uid 89); 13 Feb 2015 16:15:39 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Virus-Found: No X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_20,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE,T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD autolearn=ham version=3.3.2 X-HELO: elasmtp-masked.atl.sa.earthlink.net Received: from elasmtp-masked.atl.sa.earthlink.net (HELO elasmtp-masked.atl.sa.earthlink.net) (209.86.89.68) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with ESMTP; Fri, 13 Feb 2015 16:15:38 +0000 Received: from [68.104.56.205] (helo=macbook2.local) by elasmtp-masked.atl.sa.earthlink.net with esmtpa (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1YMIu0-00055m-Fw for gdb-patches@sourceware.org; Fri, 13 Feb 2015 11:15:36 -0500 Message-ID: <54DE2324.5030302@earthlink.net> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2015 16:15:00 -0000 From: Stan Shebs User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gdb-patches@sourceware.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add support for embedding scripts in .debug_gdb_scripts. References: <83ppaf3oe6.fsf@gnu.org> <83egqu1u69.fsf@gnu.org> <8361c5254p.fsf@gnu.org> <83egqsys6z.fsf@gnu.org> <20150119144921.GC4041@adacore.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: ae6f8838ff913eba0cc1426638a40ef67e972de0d01da940cadffa1a705751a747992fa40f6b93b3350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2015-02/txt/msg00344.txt.bz2 On 1/20/15 8:35 AM, Doug Evans wrote: > [...] > > I for one would liked to have seen the data to back up > the claim that NUL-terminated is archaic. > It's not that I don't trust someone's judgement, rather it's that that's > the wrong way to impose the change. Reminiscent of my Wikipedia editing days! It's pretty difficult to prove obsolescence of a particular usage; Wikipedia editors trying to decide the "most common" form of a term would resort to elaborate combinations of Google searches, and then get mired down in meta-debate about whether the searches were returning valid numbers - or whether 55% for A and 45% for B was a meaningful difference. My instant reaction is that "NUL-terminated" is an old-fashioned usage, but I can't say exactly when it declined. To some extent all the control codes became more obscure due to the shift from terminals to window systems, and I imagine the increasing use of char encodings beyond original ASCII has had an effect as well. In general, I would like to have the documentation maintainer be more of an editor, to have more of a free hand in deciding style rules, and to not insist that everything has to be written down beforehand. The flip side of the expectation is that we do need patches that make the documents follow the rules reliably, so future contributors are not misled. Stan