s/rewinded/rewound/?

Started by Thomas Munroover 6 years ago9 messages
#1Thomas Munro
thomas.munro@gmail.com

Hello,

The word "rewinded" appears in our manual and in a comment. That
sounds strange to my ears. Isn't it a mistake? Oxford lists the form
as "poetic" and "rare", and then says it was used by one specific
Victorian poet. Perhaps I'll send them a pull request: it's now G. M.
Hopkins and PostgreSQL? Or maybe it's in common usage in another part
of the world?

--
Thomas Munro
https://enterprisedb.com

#2Magnus Hagander
magnus@hagander.net
In reply to: Thomas Munro (#1)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 10:49 AM Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

The word "rewinded" appears in our manual and in a comment. That
sounds strange to my ears. Isn't it a mistake? Oxford lists the form
as "poetic" and "rare", and then says it was used by one specific
Victorian poet. Perhaps I'll send them a pull request: it's now G. M.
Hopkins and PostgreSQL? Or maybe it's in common usage in another part
of the world?

To me this sounds like a classic non-English-native-speaker-mistake. But
it seems at least the one in the docs come from Bruce, who definitely is...
So perhaps it's intentional to refer to "what pg_rewind does", and not
necessarily to the regular word for it?

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/&gt;
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/&gt;

#3Michael Paquier
michael@paquier.xyz
In reply to: Magnus Hagander (#2)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

On Wed, Aug 07, 2019 at 10:53:45AM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:

To me this sounds like a classic non-English-native-speaker-mistake. But
it seems at least the one in the docs come from Bruce, who definitely is...
So perhaps it's intentional to refer to "what pg_rewind does", and not
necessarily to the regular word for it?

I am not sure :)
"rewound" sounds much more natural.
--
Michael

#4Liudmila Mantrova
l.mantrova@postgrespro.ru
In reply to: Michael Paquier (#3)
1 attachment(s)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

On 8/7/19 12:00 PM, Michael Paquier wrote:

On Wed, Aug 07, 2019 at 10:53:45AM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:

To me this sounds like a classic non-English-native-speaker-mistake. But
it seems at least the one in the docs come from Bruce, who definitely is...
So perhaps it's intentional to refer to "what pg_rewind does", and not
necessarily to the regular word for it?

I am not sure :)
"rewound" sounds much more natural.
--
Michael

+1 for rewound from a non-English-native-speaker. The use of "rewound"
in the same file also supports Michael's view.

If we decide to fix this, we should probably revise and back-patch the
whole paragraph where it appears as it seems to mix up scanning target
cluster
WALs and applying source cluster WALs. A small patch is attached for
your consideration (originally proposed on pgsql-docs [1]/messages/by-id/ad6ac5bb-6689-ddb0-dc60-c5fc197d728e@postgrespro.ru).

[1]: /messages/by-id/ad6ac5bb-6689-ddb0-dc60-c5fc197d728e@postgrespro.ru
/messages/by-id/ad6ac5bb-6689-ddb0-dc60-c5fc197d728e@postgrespro.ru

--
Liudmila Mantrova
Technical writer at Postgres Professional: http://www.postgrespro.com
The Russian Postgres Company

Attachments:

pg-rewind-doc-fix.patchtext/x-patch; name=pg-rewind-doc-fix.patchDownload
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_rewind.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_rewind.sgml
index 52a1caa..a7e1705 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_rewind.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_rewind.sgml
@@ -66,14 +66,12 @@ PostgreSQL documentation
    can be found either on the target timeline, the source timeline, or their common
    ancestor. In the typical failover scenario where the target cluster was
    shut down soon after the divergence, this is not a problem, but if the
-   target cluster ran for a long time after the divergence, the old WAL
+   target cluster ran for a long time after the divergence, its old WAL
    files might no longer be present. In that case, they can be manually
-   copied from the WAL archive to the <filename>pg_wal</filename> directory, or
-   fetched on startup by configuring <xref linkend="guc-primary-conninfo"/> or
-   <xref linkend="guc-restore-command"/>.  The use of
-   <application>pg_rewind</application> is not limited to failover, e.g.  a standby
-   server can be promoted, run some write transactions, and then rewinded
-   to become a standby again.
+   copied from the WAL archive to the <filename>pg_wal</filename> directory.
+   The use of <application>pg_rewind</application> is not limited to failover,
+   e.g. a standby server can be promoted, run some write transactions, and then
+   get rewound to become a standby again.
   </para>
 
   <para>
#5Chapman Flack
chap@anastigmatix.net
In reply to: Thomas Munro (#1)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

On 08/07/19 04:48, Thomas Munro wrote:

as "poetic" and "rare", and then says it was used by one specific
Victorian poet. Perhaps I'll send them a pull request: it's now G. M.
Hopkins and PostgreSQL?

It does seem counter, original, spare, strange.

Regards,
-Chap

#6Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Magnus Hagander (#2)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> writes:

On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 10:49 AM Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com> wrote:

The word "rewinded" appears in our manual and in a comment. That
sounds strange to my ears. Isn't it a mistake?

Certainly.

To me this sounds like a classic non-English-native-speaker-mistake. But
it seems at least the one in the docs come from Bruce, who definitely is...

He might've just been committing somebody else's words without having
reviewed carefully.

regards, tom lane

#7Alvaro Herrera
alvherre@2ndquadrant.com
In reply to: Tom Lane (#6)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

On 2019-Aug-07, Tom Lane wrote:

Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> writes:

To me this sounds like a classic non-English-native-speaker-mistake. But
it seems at least the one in the docs come from Bruce, who definitely is...

He might've just been committing somebody else's words without having
reviewed carefully.

The commit message for 878bd9accb55 doesn't mention that. He didn't
add a mailing list reference, but this is easy to find at
/messages/by-id/20160720180706.GF24559@momjian.us
I lean towards the view that he was using the literal program name as a
verb, rather than trying to decline a verb normally. Note that the word
"rewound" did not appear in that SGML source when he committed that;
that was only introduced in bfc80683ce51 three years later.

--
�lvaro Herrera https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

#8Geoff Winkless
pgsqladmin@geoff.dj
In reply to: Alvaro Herrera (#7)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

On Wed, 7 Aug 2019 at 16:59, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:

He didn't
add a mailing list reference, but this is easy to find at
/messages/by-id/20160720180706.GF24559@momjian.us
I lean towards the view that he was using the literal program name as a
verb, rather than trying to decline a verb normally.

I go with that, although I think it's confusing to not use the full
app name. If I were discussing a block of data that had been passed to
a "rewind" function, I might well put "this data has been rewind()ed"
(or just rewinded). But if I were discussing the concept itself, I
would say rewound.

eg In the example given, I would accept "and then
<application>pg_rewind</application>ed to become a standby".

Although I would probably have reworded it to use "and then
<application>pg_rewind</application> run again to set it to standby"
or something similar, because the "ed" form really does look odd in
documentation.

I don't think using "rewound" instead is explicit enough in this instance.

But that's just me. Feel free to ignore.

Geoff

#9Michael Paquier
michael@paquier.xyz
In reply to: Liudmila Mantrova (#4)
Re: s/rewinded/rewound/?

On Wed, Aug 07, 2019 at 12:48:29PM +0300, Liudmila Mantrova wrote:

If we decide to fix this, we should probably revise and back-patch the whole
paragraph where it appears as it seems to mix up scanning target cluster
WALs and applying source cluster WALs. A small patch is attached for your
consideration (originally proposed on pgsql-docs [1]).

Okay, I can see the confusion, and your proposed rewording looks fine
to me. Any objections?
--
Michael