GNU bug report logs - #28790
[PATCH] Replaced "which see" with "q.v.".

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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: John Williams <jrw <at> pobox.com>
Cc: 28790 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#28790: [PATCH] Replaced "which see" with "q.v.".
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 09:48:41 +0300

> From: John Williams <jrw <at> pobox.com>
> Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 14:22:50 -0700
> 
> While it may seem strange to replace an English phrase with a
> relatively obscure Latin abbreviation, there are a number of
> advantages.  As someone whose first language is English, I've never
> seen "which see" used anywhere else the way it is in Emacs.  It looks
> totally ungrammatical to me, and I found it quite confusing when I
> first encountered it.  It's a difficult phrase to search for because
> it's formed from such common words.  OTOH, q.v. is easily searchable,
> it has a well-defined meaning, and the conventional way to use it
> serves as a drop-in replacement for the way "which see" is used in
> Emacs.

Thanks, but we've discussed similar ideas in the past, and eventually
decided not to install such changes, certainly not summarily replacing
every "which see" with a "q.v.".

The absolute majority of your proposed changes are in the doc strings,
where we already have a direct link to the documentation of a symbol
whose name precedes "which see".  So whether the reader understands
that or doesn't, the link is already there to click on, and no harm is
done by a relatively rare use of this phrase.

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