OpenSource documentation problems

[Michael Sparks]

A.M. Kuchling wrote:

> On 1 Sep 2005 05:04:33 -0700,
> Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>> Please note that I'm not labelling you as a troll.
> 
> No, he's simply barking mad.  I was amused by a rec.arts.sf.written
> discussion [1] where Lee complains that Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)'s
> writing was unclear in style; apparently he's not aware that conventions
> and styles change over time.
> 
> --amk
> 
> [1] http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/msg/0ec9871395fc90d3

Oddly that makes me wonder if Xah Lee is a some kind of bot - given it
follows a similar fashion:
 
oh, this writing is [criticism] of [ specific]

"the "allow that" should be "allow the notion that". But the 
 whole thing is written in a confounded way. "

Specific grammar correction and note that the grammar subsystem detected too
many errors.

Better: Grammar correction suggestion. Not actually any clearer to many
people. 

more better with logicality: Similar bad parsing. A person would translate
the old style english into a more modern style if what they're doing is
criticising old english.

The whole thing just smacks to me of some text analyser. The final paragraph
contains some standard writing advice and cliches:
   * to write clearly, the first thing is to think clearly
   * get rid of big words and use  short sentences.

It'd certainly explain the online tourettes syndrome of swearing all the way
through a post - the text generator getting stuck on a particular word
sets...

Not-really-seriously :-) 
(Though usenet would be an interesting, if antisocial and annoying place to
test such a beast :-)


Michael.