Subject: Re: Gnus spelling fix: unexist -> nonexistent

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 19:27:09 -0700

On 07/08/2013 07:54 AM, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Anyway, I just don't see much of an upside to changing the what symbols
> are used in internal data structures.

Emacs source code should avoid misspellings even in
comments and in symbols used only internally.  This is
because the misspellings can cause confusion among
developers, who are the main audience for the code.

I could mark "unexist" as a word that is allowed to be
in Emacs source code and documentation -- but then that word
is more likely to slip into places where it's not wanted.

> Calling them `gazonk' instead of `unexist' makes as much sense.

Actually, it'd make more sense to call them 'gazonk'.

When I look for spelling errors, my heuristics ignore
strings like 'gazonk' -- which are obviously intended
and are unlikely to cause confusion or inconsistencies --
and focus on strings like 'unexist' and 'inaccessable'
and 'chedule' because they look more like English words
and so are more likely to cause confusion.

I could change 'unexist' to 'gazonk', if you like.
That would be better to what we have now, for the
reasons mentioned above.  Still, as long as we're
changing it, why not to the usual word?