bilbo.geoff@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (Geoff Kuenning) (05/06/88)
In many places in the X documentation, the non-word "feep" is used. Appended to each usage, in parentheses, is the defining word "bell". As far as I can tell, there is no reason for this unnecessary jargon beyond somebody's desire to be clever and use non-standard invented words. In this case, the jargon doesn't even define a useful concept, as demonstrated by the necessity of defining it with the previously-used terms "bell" or "beep" whenever it is used. With the next release of X, would it be too much to ask to have someone globally replace "feep" with "beep"? Geoff Kuenning geoff@lcc.ucla.edu geoff@ITcorp.com
jg@jumbo.dec.com (Jim Gettys) (05/06/88)
In article <8805052343.AA09295@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> bilbo.geoff@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (Geoff Kuenning) writes: > >In many places in the X documentation, the non-word "feep" is used. Appended >to each usage, in parentheses, is the defining word "bell". Feep is a piece of MIT jargon; it is a historical aberration from earlier versions of X. In earlier versions of X, XFeep was the name of the call to ring the bell (not that bell makes much sense, either; last terminal I saw with a real bell was many years ago). V11 removed this term. >As far as I can tell, there is no reason for this unnecessary jargon beyond >somebody's desire to be clever and use non-standard invented words. In this >case, the jargon doesn't even define a useful concept, as demonstrated by >the necessity of defining it with the previously-used terms "bell" or "beep" >whenever it is used. > >With the next release of X, would it be too much to ask to have someone >globally replace "feep" with "beep"? I recommend filing a bug report, listing the places you find it. I just went and scanned Xlib for it; could not find any occurances of it. In fact, I only found a single use in the X man page in a quick scan of some of the documentation. So unless you can find more occurances, that doesn't seem like "many" to me. In general, specific bug reports are much more helpful and informative than network flames; in particular, they get tracked explicitly, which postings to the net do not. This is true in general, not just in the "feep" case... And a sense of humor is in order; the documents are too dry as it is... - Jim Gettys