[geeks] KDE "konsole" cluebat?

[Micah R Ledbetter]

velociraptor wrote:

> While I generally agree with Micah, you can successfully communicate
> and still not give the impression you'd like.  It's a balancing act.
> Like the scene in _My Cousin Vinnie_ where Joe Pesci is taken to task
> by the southern judge about his thick Jersey accent, ("yoots,
> yeroner")--some language is appropriate in some situations and not in
> others.  Hence my statement about intent--you have to consider your
> intended communication from the point of view of the audience as well
> as your own, because it's the communicator's responsibility to get the
> message across in a way that meets both criteria.

Yeah, that's true. Sometimes one's *method* of communication does more 
communicating than he would like :).

> You cannot account 100% for the biases, understanding, etc. of the
> audience, but as a communicator it's your job to do your best to "read
> their minds" before you put your writing or speech out there.
> 
> It's not about "correctness" per se, it's about the measure of success
> as defined by the writer's audience, in my opinion.

Well, I'd say it's about the measure of success as defined by the writer 
himself. For instance, (warning: broad generalization!) "high art" is a 
success because the intended audience is intended not to understand it. 
I'd still call this successful or correct, since it did what was 
intended, I'd just also call it stupid :) - most of the time, anyway.

> Much software documentation, for example, is quite successful of
> documenting all the options of all the menus in the application, but
> fails horrendously at the job of context, never explaining *why* a
> user might want those options.  (KDE, natch.)  I'd call this a failure
> of audience analysis rather than a failure to communicate--they
> successfully imparted a message, just not the one the audience wanted.

I'd do almost the same thing. I'd just make the assumption that they 
intended the documentation for non-technical audience, and then conclude 
a failure on that front.

Of course, there's always the - hopefully joking - attitude that "my 
code was hard to write - it should be hard to read!". The audience fails 
to analyze in both cases, but there was different intent on the imparter.

> But calling such shifts "sloppy" just because they might disregard
> formal rules is short-sighted in my mind.  Old school grammarians are
> just that--old.  Language evolves faster than many are willing to
> accept.  Nothing wrong with their usuage, but they are unrealistic at
> best if they think the rest of the world's is going to allow language
> to be set in stone.  We'd all be speaking something older than
> Sumerian if that was the case.

Quite so. Not that being taught "how to write" in a corporate/academic 
environment is a bad thing... it is good for what it is, just the same 
as being taught how to speak a second language is a really good thing. 
It's just dumb to go around telling people they're not allowed to speak 
any other way. If one wants to speak to others, one should change his 
interpretation, not others' speech.

  - Micah