LiveCode Forums

The Documentation has quite a few spelling mistakes, which, considering that there are things called "spell checkers"
is a bit disgraceful and might give the wrong sort of impression to people.

"Program that accepts operating-system commands. The program a user uses to interact with the operating system, move files around, lauch applications, and so on."

Just the most recent example I stumbled upon.

While it is quite an easy exercise to open the PDF documentation and run it through a spell-checker, I am not
at all sure how that can then be "folded in" to the IDE.

Just a quick run through the first 100 pages indicates that there are several spelling mistakes,
several rather elementary grammatical mistakes and a high level of
inconsistency over whether to use American English or British English.

Well I prefer British English then, the way we got it to learn at school (at least in the Netherlands).
And no 'slang' allowed either, like: Am instead of I'm or I am. (not that I think it would be used in descriptions but you never know)

sphere wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 2:36 pm

Well i prefer British English then, the way we got it to learn at school (at least in the Netherlands).
And no 'slang' allowed either, like: Am instead of I'm or I am. (not that i think i would be used in descriptions but you never know)

Well, let us hope that in the Netherlands you are taught to use "I" for 'Ik' and not 'i'.

As a person born in Scotland, went to school in England, and holding degrees from an English, an American and a Scots University
- -
Oof: and to think that for years I was trying to look like that.
-
I don't really care which variant of English is used,

[juist so lang as fowk that disnea thole til Scots caa it a dialeck o Inglis as they yaised tae.]

but what I cannot abide is "mid-Atlantic" English, where people who don't really understand British versus American do
a mix-and-match, and because they are in the middle of the Atlantic get their linguistic feet wet.

LiveCode seem to prefer American English (c.f. backGroundColor), but the documentation is inconsistent.

richmond62 wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 2:59 pm

Well, let us hope that in the Netherlands you are taught to use "I" for 'Ik' and not 'i'.

Oeps, indeed you're correct. So I corrected my incorrect 'ik'.

What is the URL to the pull request or bug report number you submitted on this?

FourthWorld wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 3:58 pm

What is the URL to the pull request or bug report number you submitted on this?

I'm never quite sure why your comments seem to get on my nerves about 90% of the time?

[Probably because 90% of mine annoy you: whoops; truth hurts . . .

. . . self-knowledge is all very fine, up to a point. ]

Tomorrow is another day: and as my younger son stays in Los Angeles I know the day is yet young for you; but
round these parts it's "bedtime for babies" so, abusive post will have to wait until the morning.

richmond62 wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 7:35 pm

FourthWorld wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 3:58 pm

What is the URL to the pull request or bug report number you submitted on this?

I'm never quite sure why your comments seem to get on my nerves about 90% of the time?

[Probably because 90% of mine annoy you: whoops; truth hurts . . .

. . . self-knowledge is all very fine, up to a point. ]

Tomorrow is another day: and as my younger son stays in Los Angeles I know the day is yet young for you; but
round these parts it's "bedtime for babies" so, abusive post will have to wait until the morning.

So I'll all take that to mean, "I haven't."

I don't read the manual much, and I haven't noticed misspellings in the section I have, which is why I asked. A few examples go a long way to understanding the problem, and a bug report is, as you know, the step that makes them actionable.

The docs have a long history, and many seeming misspellings are the result of the various conversion processes used over the years. Some of them aren't actually misspellings at all, when you look at the source, but merely misapplied or incomplete tagging and/or escaping in the newer HTML.

Without examples it's hard to hunt them down. With examples everything is easier, but the remedy may not be as simple as it might seem to someone who's never worked on the LC documentation. Formats may not be what you're used to, so suggestions like "just run a spelling checker" may not apply.

Ther's more than spelling mistakes, there are elementary grammatical mistakes.
If you can point me to a way to sort out ALL versions of the Documentation (i.e, not just the PDF)
I'd like to think I can sort out 98% relatively quickly.

I would not be so daft as to mention 100%

richmond62 wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 8:42 pm

Ther's more than spelling mistakes, there are elementary grammatical mistakes.
If you can point me to a way to sort out ALL versions of the Documentation (i.e, not just the PDF)
I'd like to think I can sort out 98% relatively quickly.

I would not be so daft as to mention 100%

That's an amazing offer - thanks!

Here ya' go:
https://github.com/livecode/livecode/tree/develop/docs

That's an amazing offer - thanks!

I wouldn't rush to thank me just yet.

So . . . if I download "all that stuff" from the GIT hub, presumably I can just
be 'incredibly goofy' and run each constituent document through a DECENT spell checker & grammar checker
and save the results?

Obviously (!) I will NOT allow that to run automatically as machines are machines, and human language being what it is . . .

A spelling checker will catch some of those, but please believe that I have no reason to mislead you about the formatting issues, which comprise most of the errant Dictionary entries I've seen.

With a proposed change affecting so many files, it may be best to seek guidance from the maintainers on the best way to proceed before diving in. If you file a bug report on the spelling issues, and describe your plan for addressing them, they'll be able to reply with any details needed to do that well.

It would be useful to know what format the suffix .lcdoc refers to.

Is this a LiveCode specific document format or just a text file which has had ".lcdoc" bunged on the end of it?

Opening an .lcdoc document with LibreOffice allowed mt to correct the spelling and so on, and
having exported the result as a text docuement I just appended .lcdoc to it, and the format appeared to be exactly as per the original.

The only "problem" I can see is that going through all those documents is going to be tedious: but probably nothing that
some half-decent music and a couple of cups of coffee won't make bearable.

Hi Richmond,

here is the "how to" of "Contributing to LiveCode Documentation"

https://github.com/livecode/livecode/bl ... to_docs.md

If you plan on doing a pull-request change just the stuff you want change in the document instead of pasting the corrected version wholesale into the document. The difference being that for the reviewer in the latter case everything is "new" when reviewing, in the former case the reviewer will see right away just the changes to the existing document.

Kind regards
Bernd

Thank you for that.