Again: "metapackage", "meta package" or "meta-package" (Was: Accepted cdd 0.5.3 (source all))

[Andreas Tille]

On Thu, 3 Jul 2008, Frank S. Thomas wrote:

>> I suggested that Lintian should check the spelling of metapackage, see
>> #476681 for details. Prior to the bug report there was brief discussion[1]
>> in debian-l10-english about the "correct" spelling of metapackage and the
>> consensus was to go with the majority opinion that is "metapackage". I'm
>> curious which dictionary votes for meta-package.
>>
>> Cheers,
>
> Sorry, I forgot the reference:
>
> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-english/2008/04/msg00006.html

Ahh, thanks for the hint.  But IMHO a "voting" between maintainers is
not really a clever method to find the correct spelling.  Considering
that I'm probably the author of quite a lot of those descriptions and
my language skills as non-native speaker are not good enough to decide
what might be proper English and that this might be the case for other
authors as well, the voting is done by perhaps a majority of uneducated
persons (the problem of any "democratic" decision ;-) ).  I tried
Emacs with ispell dictionary british which did not know metapackage and
suggested either "meta package" or "meta-package".  I'm keeping
Ben Armstrong in CC who is a native speaker and he used in the Debian
Junior packages the spelling "meta package".

Even if debian-l10n-english might be read by enough native speakers
to trust them I'm not fully convinced because only a single ("potentially")
native speaker (I don't know Justin B Rye, but Christian is French and
you are German) responded.  So I like a unification of the spelling but
I would like it to be based on a deeper research on this issue.

Kind regards and thanks for the good idea of a lintian check

        Andreas.

PS: Please CC me, I'm not subscribed to debian-l10n-english@...

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[Justin B Rye]

Andreas Tille wrote:

>>[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-english/2008/04/msg00006.html
>
> Ahh, thanks for the hint.  But IMHO a "voting" between maintainers is
> not really a clever method to find the correct spelling.  Considering
> that I'm probably the author of quite a lot of those descriptions and
> my language skills as non-native speaker are not good enough to decide
> what might be proper English and that this might be the case for other
> authors as well, the voting is done by perhaps a majority of uneducated
> persons (the problem of any "democratic" decision ;-) ).  I tried
> Emacs with ispell dictionary british which did not know metapackage and
> suggested either "meta package" or "meta-package".

That's what it would do with any compound that isn't yet present in
the dictionary as an entry in its own right, but has obvious
subcomponents that are - compare the way it handles "wordless" or
"ispellable".

> I'm keeping
> Ben Armstrong in CC who is a native speaker and he used in the Debian
> Junior packages the spelling "meta package".

The problem with this is that "meta" as a freestanding adjective has
a different meaning - online dictionaries say things like:
# Self-referential; referring to itself or its characteristics, esp.
# as a parody; about. Example: "That book is so meta".

> Even if debian-l10n-english might be read by enough native speakers
> to trust them I'm not fully convinced because only a single ("potentially")
> native speaker (I don't know Justin B Rye, but Christian is French and
> you are German) responded.  So I like a unification of the spelling but
> I would like it to be based on a deeper research on this issue.

I'm a native speaker of en_GB, but if my arguments don't convince
anybody, I can't claim to have more than one vote.  If there isn't a
consensus, it's too soon to make it a rule.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
        sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package


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[Christian Perrier]

Quoting Andreas Tille (tillea@...):

> Even if debian-l10n-english might be read by enough native speakers
> to trust them I'm not fully convinced because only a single ("potentially")
> native speaker (I don't know Justin B Rye, but Christian is French and
> you are German) responded.  So I like a unification of the spelling but


Justin is a native speaker of English and, from what I have seen in
more than 1 year of common work on English texts, very clever and
cautious when it comes at spelling, grammar, syntax and overall
knowledge of the English language and its flavours.

I would definitely recommend to stick with his advice.

Additional thoughts: latin prefix are used mostly the same way in most
languages: without hyphens and attached to the following word, except
when this would create diphtongues:

in French:
Megabit
Mega-octet
Metapaquet
Meta-induction
etc.

[Andreas Tille]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008, Justin B Rye wrote:

> The problem with this is that "meta" as a freestanding adjective has
> a different meaning - online dictionaries say things like:
> # Self-referential; referring to itself or its characteristics, esp.
> # as a parody; about. Example: "That book is so meta".

Yes, this is a strong argument.

> I'm a native speaker of en_GB, but if my arguments don't convince
> anybody, I can't claim to have more than one vote.  If there isn't a
> consensus, it's too soon to make it a rule.

It's good to know that a en_GB native speaker has its opinion on this
and I would trust you more than a "voting" via existing descriptions.

Kind regards

         Andreas.

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[MJ Ray-2]

Justin B Rye <jbr@...> wrote:
> Andreas Tille wrote:
> >>[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-english/2008/04/msg00006.html
[...]
> > I'm keeping
> > Ben Armstrong in CC who is a native speaker and he used in the Debian
> > Junior packages the spelling "meta package".
>
> The problem with this is that "meta" as a freestanding adjective has
> a different meaning - online dictionaries say things like:
> # Self-referential; referring to itself or its characteristics, esp.
> # as a parody; about. Example: "That book is so meta".

At best, "meta package" would be a two-word noun, not an adjective and
a noun.  (Compare with "the Yugoslavia report" which is a valid noun.)
In line with the various style guides that argue that compound nouns
become hyphenated and then eventually become single words, I'd write
it as "metapackage".

Maybe we should be calling them more mainstream like "task packages",
"requirements packages" or something like that instead?

Regards,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct


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[Ben Armstrong]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:52:24 +0100
MJ Ray <mjr@...> wrote:
> > Andreas Tille wrote:
> > >>[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-english/2008/04/msg00006.html
> [...]
> > > I'm keeping
> > > Ben Armstrong in CC who is a native speaker and he used in the Debian
> > > Junior packages the spelling "meta package".

Possibly influenced by a lazy tendency to refer to them just as "metas"
colloquially rather than a conscientious adherence to the rules of the
language.

> At best, "meta package" would be a two-word noun, not an adjective and
> a noun.  (Compare with "the Yugoslavia report" which is a valid noun.)
> In line with the various style guides that argue that compound nouns
> become hyphenated and then eventually become single words, I'd write
> it as "metapackage".

Either meta-package or metapackage would be fine.

> Maybe we should be calling them more mainstream like "task packages",
> "requirements packages" or something like that instead?

Good luck getting people to follow suit.

Ben


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[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008, Ben Armstrong wrote:

> Either meta-package or metapackage would be fine.

So no cons against metapackage but several pros.  I will try to

     s/meta[- ]package/metapackage

in all texts I'm responsible for and commit that the lintian check
is a good thing.

>> Maybe we should be calling them more mainstream like "task packages",
>> "requirements packages" or something like that instead?
>
> Good luck getting people to follow suit.

Well there was another voice that our terminology is not optimal.
But I think this is another topic.  We just talked about spelling
of a term we are using for a long time - so we should fix the
spelling first.  Later we could discuss proper naming of

    metapackages
    tasks
    Custom Debian Distributions (which is the most boring missnamer [2])

Thanks for your input

          Andreas.


[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-custom/2008/07/msg00009.html
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/CDDNamingProposals

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