GNU bug report logs - #6877
Documentation: "till" vs "until" in docstrings

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: MON KEY <monkey <at> sandpframing.com>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: Documentation: "till" vs "until" in docstrings
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:10:02 -0400

A "till" is:

 up to the time of         <- prepositive
 before                    <- conjunctive
 glacier dirt              <- noun
 a money box               <- noun
 the act of ploughing soil <- verb

an "until" is:

 up to the time of         <- prepositive
 before                    <- conjunctive

While it is considered reasonable by many[1] to substitute "till" for
"until" I don't see this as something to promote in the docs esp.
when there is a negligible economy in using of "till" instead of "until":

(length "till")  ;=> 4
(length "until") ;=> 5

And where the latter has presents little interpretational ambiguity
the former does esp. vis a vis putative Emacs intl8n/translation
efforts.

Likewise, practitioners of many programming languages often have an
immediate usage mnemonic for "until".[2]


Note, following list of files/symbols/strings identify visible
occurrences (i.e not inside a comment) where " till " appears in the
Emacs sources and would be better suited wit the use of until:

--
src/textprop.c

`next-char-property-change'
 "This scans characters forward in the current buffer from POSITION till"

`previous-char-property-change'
 "Scans characters backward in the current buffer from POSITION till it"

`next-single-char-property-change'
 "Scans characters forward from POSITION till it finds"

`previous-single-char-property-change'
 "Scans characters backward from POSITION till it finds"

`next-property-change'
 "Scans characters forward from POSITION in OBJECT till it finds"

`next-single-property-change'
 "Scans characters forward from POSITION till it finds"

`previous-property-change'
 "Scans characters backwards from POSITION in OBJECT till it finds"

`previous-single-property-change'
"Scans characters backward from POSITION till it finds"

--
doc/lispref/text.texi

"string or buffer @var{object} till it finds a change in some text"

--
lisp/subr.el
"Execute BODY, but don't call the after-change functions till the end."

--
lisp/doc-view.el
`doc-view-open-text'

 (message "DocView: please wait till conversion finished.")

`doc-view-search'
 (message "DocView: please wait till conversion finished.")

--
lisp/midnight.el
`midnight-next'

  "Return the number of seconds till the next midnight."

--
lisp/vc/vc-rcs.el
`vc-release-greater-or-equal'
 "lower \(5.6.7 is earlier than 5.6.7.1\).  Comparison runs till the end"

--
calendar/appt.el
`appt-mode-string'

"The actual string includes the amount of time till the appointment."

--
progmodes/which-func.el
`which-func-non-auto-modes'

"List of major modes where Which Function mode is inactive till Imenu is used."

--
progmodes/fortran.el
`fortran-column-ruler'

"Insert a column ruler momentarily above current line, till next keystroke."

--
cedet/ede/files.el
`semantic-debug-go'

"Continue parsing till finish or breakpoint."

--
cedet/semantic/util.el
`semantic-recursive-find-nonterminal-by-name'

"Start search with BUFFER.  Recurse through all dependencies till found."

--
admin/emacs-pretesters

"user-visible bugs, don't wait till pretest time.  Instead, send them"

"pretest time, we will have to defer them till later, and that might"

admin/notes/copyright

"files, which did not appear till Athena support was added in Lucid"

"  - had no copyright notice till Feb 2007. ChangeLog.3 suggests it was"

"  till Feb 2007, when FSF copyright was added. Matt Norwood advised:"

---

[1] From a usage note @ dictionary.com:
,----
|
| "Till" and "until" are both old in the language and are
| interchangeable as both prepositions and conjunctions:
|
|  "It rained till (or until) nearly midnight."
|
|  "The savannah remained brown and lifeless until (or till) the rains
|   began."
|
| Till is not a shortened form of until and is not spelled "'till".
|
| "'Til" is usually considered a spelling error, though widely used in
| advertising:
|
|  "Open 'til ten."
|
`----

For example Emacs lisp has these "*-until-*' symbols:
 `run-hook-with-args-until-failure' `run-hook-with-args-until-success'
`timer-until'

Moreover other languages have untils to as evidenced with:

 - the until keyword in Common Lisp's `loop' macro,
 - the Perl until operator see `perl-font-lock-keywords-2'
 - Delphi Pascals until see `delphi-keywords'
 - Pascal is littered with "until" references See pascal-mode's
`pascal-start-keywords'
 - Ada 95 has them too, see `ada-95-string-keywords'
 - Icon has it in `icon-resword-alist' and `icon-font-lock-keywords-2'
 - IDL has it in `idlwave-idl-keywords'
 - MetaFont/MetaPost has one in `meta-common-primitives-list'
 - Modula-2 has until in `m3-font-lock-keywords-2'
 - Octave - you betcha - see `octave-end-keywords'
 - Ruby too try `ruby-block-beg-keywords'
 - sh has some as well see `sh-leading-keywords', `sh-indent-for-do', etc.
 - Simula 87 - yep try `simula-font-lock-keywords-2'
 - SQL - why not try the Linter, Oracle, and Postgres keywords
 - Verilog - but of course check out `verilog-keywords'
 - VHDL won't be left out its in `vhdl-93-keywords'


--

/s_P\

Message #8 received at 6877 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: MON KEY <monkey <at> sandpframing.com>
Cc: 6877 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#6877: Documentation: "till" vs "until" in docstrings
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:45:03 +0300

> Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:10:02 -0400
> From: MON KEY <monkey <at> sandpframing.com>
> Cc: 
> 
> Note, following list of files/symbols/strings identify visible
> occurrences (i.e not inside a comment) where " till " appears in the
> Emacs sources and would be better suited wit the use of until:

Quite a few of them could become longer than one line if "till" is
replaced by "until".  (They are already too long, IMO.)  Emacs coding
guidelines mandate that the short description fit on a single line.

Message #11 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Ted Zlatanov <tzz <at> lifelogs.com>
Cc: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#6877: Documentation: "till" vs "until" in docstrings
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:34:01 -0500

> From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz <at> lifelogs.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
> Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:07:57 -0500
> 
> EZ> Quite a few of them could become longer than one line if "till" is
> EZ> replaced by "until".  (They are already too long, IMO.)  Emacs coding
> EZ> guidelines mandate that the short description fit on a single line.
> 
> I think that can be resolved by judicious editing.  Generally we should
> not contort the language to save a character; let's fix the long lines
> instead of using "till."  I count 228 ocurrences in the Emacs source (67
> in the source according to `ack') and will fix them[1] if you agree.

Given editing that is "judicious" enough, I certainly agree ;-)

TIA

Message #14 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: "'Ted Zlatanov'" <tzz <at> lifelogs.com>, <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
Subject: RE: bug#6877: Documentation: "till" vs "until" in docstrings
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 07:54:20 -0800

> Seconded.

Thirded (in case it matters).

Message #19 received at 6877-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
To: 6877-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#6877: Documentation: "till" vs "until" in docstrings
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:29:06 -0400

These uses of "till" seems like perfectly good English to me.

Message #20 received at 6877-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: "'Glenn Morris'" <rgm <at> gnu.org>, <6877-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: RE: bug#6877: Documentation: "till" vs "until" in docstrings
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 15:50:56 -0700

> These uses of "till" seems like perfectly good English to me.

Yes, they are.  There is lots of perfectly good English that we might not choose
to use in the doc.

It can make sense to use a word like "until" instead of "till" because more
people are familiar with it.  (But it's not a big deal.)

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