From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263700AbTDXPfw (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 11:35:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263715AbTDXPfw (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 11:35:52 -0400 Received: from watch.techsource.com ([209.208.48.130]:8403 "EHLO techsource.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263700AbTDXPfv (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 11:35:51 -0400 Message-ID: <3EA80909.1080106@techsource.com> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 11:55:53 -0400 From: Timothy Miller User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk CC: Steven Cole , Johannes Ruscheinski , Chuck Ebbert <76306.1226@compuserve.com>, linux-kernel , Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: How did the Spelling Police miss this one? References: <200304230936_MC3-1-35AA-864B@compuserve.com> <1051109635.29423.20.camel@spc9.esa.lanl.gov> <20030424033913.GA32423@mail-infomine.ucr.edu> <1051158383.22271.123.camel@spc> <3EA7F8AE.8050402@techsource.com> <20030424150950.GW10374@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote: >On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 10:46:06AM -0400, Timothy Miller wrote: > > > >>On the other hand, "canonicalize", while strange and new, unambiguously >>means (b). >> >>Is there an already-existing word which means (b)? >> >> > >% webster normalize >nor-mal-ize \'no[0xC7]r-me-,l[0xF5]^-z\ vt -ized; -iz-ing >(1865) >1: to make conform to or reduce to a norm or standard >2: to make normal (as by a transformation of variables) >3: to bring or restore (as relations between countries) to a normal > condition >-- nor-mal-iz-able \-,l[0xF5]^--ze-bel\ adj >-- nor-mal-iza-tion \,no[0xC7]r-me-le-'za^--shen\ n > > > > Yeah, that works pretty well, but there's more we can debate about. :) (a) Are "normal" and "canonical" necessarily equivalent? They certainly aren't in Psychiatry. (b) Are people going to know what we're talking about when we say "normalize" as well as they do when they see "canonicalize". As a person who enjoyed studying Linguistics and hated studying English, I prefer to take the liberal (descriptive, rather than prescriptive) stance and vote in favor of the use of the word "canonilcalize". But the debate isn't over, and I'm willing to change my opinion (not that it really matters...).