Re: [Bug 11716] Identity constraints: grammatical typo

On Jan 12, 2011, at 7:17 AM, Henry S. Thompson wrote:

> 
> C. M. Sperberg-McQueen writes:
> 
>> Thanks for the clarification.  I think 'exactly' does no work in the sentence,
>> so I don't think it's a loss.  (As a test:  what would a node set look like if it 
>> had inexactly one node?)
> 
> It has two nodes.

The text says "one", not "one or more" or "at least one".   When a
child says "May I have a cookie?" and a parent answers "you may 
have one", the parent does not mean "you may have one or more."

A single syllable actually does the job here.  We do not need four.

But this is all wasted talk about a trivial side point; the presence or absence
of 'exactly' does not make the difference between a clear text and the
text we now have.  Dropping or adding it certainly makes a difference,
but recasting the constraint so that it can be understood without
ambiguity is I think more important.

-- 
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* C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Black Mesa Technologies LLC
* http://www.blackmesatech.com 
* http://cmsmcq.com/mib                 
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Received on Wednesday, 12 January 2011 16:02:07 UTC