GNU bug report logs - #1381
23.0.60; capitalization of car and cdr in the doc

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From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: "'Yavor Doganov'" <yavor <at> gnu.org>, "'Eli Zaretskii'" <eliz <at> gnu.org>,
        <1381 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: bug#1381: 23.0.60; capitalization of car and cdr in the doc
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:28:32 -0800

> > One problem with saying just "car" is that it could be confused to
> > mean an automobile.  (I'm serious.)
> 
> Absolutely.  We had a few reports from readers of
> http://gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html who complained that there's a typo.
> We changed it to <tt>car</tt>.

I won't belabor the point, and, again, I'm OK with whatever is decided, but just
for the record, that reference really argues exactly the _opposite_:


1. Unlike the Elisp manual, that speech does not define terms such as `car' that
it uses. It is not intended to be a rigorous or complete description of the Lisp
language and its terminology.

`car' is used in that speech only in passing, with no explanation of what it is.
This is a speech to a Lisp community, after all. The readers might not all be
Lispians, of course, which is why it helps to use a special typeface when it is
first encountered in reading. But Richard's use of `car' in no way explains what
it is - he just uses it normally as if speaking to Lispians. That is quite
different from the use of `car' in the Elisp manual, where it is defined
clearly.


2. Even in that speech (its printed representation, which is all that can count
for this topic), `car' is written as <tt>car</tt>  _only the first time it is
used_. Thereafter, it is written normally - no uppercase, no special typeface -
just normal text, treating it as a normal word.

So even when printing the speech for an audience that you know might be confused
by the term (because of typo reports), you chose to use a special typeface for
only the _first occurrence_.


#2 is exactly what I proposed: Use whatever convention we normally employ to
introduce (define) a term - <tt> or caps or whatever, and thereafter treat it as
a normal word.

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