- From: Adrien de Croy <adrien@qbik.com>
- Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:17:29 +1200
- To: John Kemp <john@jkemp.net>
- CC: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>, Henrik Nordstrom <henrik@henriknordstrom.net>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, 'HTTP Working Group' <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
hmmm, having re-read the actual sentence again, may be best to ignore me on that (those that don't already filter my mail into their junk folder :) ) I'll go have another coffee.. Adrien de Croy wrote: > > > Form a purely lingustic point of view, 'The' doesn't mean there can be > only one. > > 'the' being the definite article as opposed to 'a' being the > indefinite article purely distinguishes between a particular known > thing and any unknown thing. > > So I think in this case, 'the' simply refers to a particular list that > we are currently considering (therefore it is known in the context of > the sentence), rather than saying there can be only one, or referring > to any unknown list which is what 'a' would imply. > > Adrien > > > John Kemp wrote: >> >> Mark Nottingham wrote: >>> >>> Not clear. My take (as a native American speaker who has been >>> corrupted to speak en-au sometimes) is that 'the' implies that there >>> is only one possible set. >> >> That's also my understanding as an en-gb native, corrupted to speak >> ~en-us/gb. >> >>> >>> However, I'm not that fussed about it; I'm happy to give it to the >>> editors to decide (and I suspect they'll change it to 'the'). >>> >>> Unless someone has a good technical argument otherwise, and is >>> passionate enough about it to hold us up, we'll let them decide. >> >> No engineering-based technical argument, but I do think there is a >> clear semantic difference between 'a list' (one of a potential >> several) and 'the list' (the only list). Using 'a' implies (to me at >> least) that the server may maintain more than one list of allowed >> methods for the given resource, and return a particular list given >> particular circumstances. 'The' doesn't imply that to me. If we wish >> to imply by that sentence that there is no single list of allowed >> methods per resource, and we believe that anyone other than me will >> notice the difference, then using 'a' would make sense. >> >> Or, we could just let the editors decide ;) >> >> Regards, >> >> - john >> >>> >>> >>> On 07/04/2008, at 9:39 AM, Henrik Nordstrom wrote: >>> >>>> sön 2008-04-06 klockan 13:57 +0200 skrev Julian Reschke: >>>> >>>>> I haven't heard any new feedback, so I propose that we go with this >>>>> proposal. >>>> >>>> Was there consensus on "the list" -> "a list" change? >>>> >>>> I have no opinion on that change as of now, but it looks odd to me >>>> (but >>>> may just be a language issue with English not being my native >>>> language) >>>> >>>> Regards >>>> Henrik >>>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/ >>> >>> >> >> > -- Adrien de Croy - WinGate Proxy Server - http://www.wingate.com
Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2008 07:17:18 UTC