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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