Subject: English Grammar question

From: Susanne Ebrecht <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:08:34 +0200

Hello,

during translation the history.sgml - I found the following sentences in

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/history.html

"The design of the rule system at that time was described in /The design 
of the POSTGRES rules system/ 
<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/biblio.html#STON87A>. The 
rationale and architecture of the storage manager were detailed in /The 
design of the POSTGRES storage system 
<http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/ERL-M87-06.pdf>/"

I am not sure if the grammar is correct here.

My feeling says it should be:

"is decribed" and "are detailed"  instead of "was and were"

I am pretty sure these books still exist.

Susanne

-- 
Susanne Ebrecht - 2ndQuadrant
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services
www.2ndQuadrant.com

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:15:23 +0100

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Susanne Ebrecht
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> "The design of the rule system at that time was described in The design of
> the POSTGRES rules system. The rationale and architecture of the storage
> manager were detailed in The design of the POSTGRES storage system "
>

It seems fine to me. The tense refers to when it was written, not when
the papers were available (or not).

-- 
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

---

From: Simon Riggs <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:18:35 +0100

> I am pretty sure these books still exist.

I think both are correct, but you are right that those books still
exist and so it looks archaic and can be reworded.

-- 
 Simon Riggs                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
 PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

---

From: Heikki Linnakangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:18:59 +0300

> I am pretty sure these books still exist.

Both would be correct, but with a slightly different meaning. What it 
means now is that someone wrote a description of (= described) the 
design in that book. If you change it to "is described", it means that 
there is a description on the (old) design, with nothing said about when 
the description was written.

The difference becomes more clear if you change the sentence to active form:

"[Some unnamed person] described the design of the rule system at that 
time in /The design of the POSTGRES rules system" (was described)

vs.

"/The design of the POSTGRES rules system/ describes the design of the 
rules system at that time"  (is described)

-- 
   Heikki Linnakangas
   EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

---

From: Robert Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:11:34 -0400

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 4:18 AM, Heikki Linnakangas
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> Both would be correct, but with a slightly different meaning. What it means
> now is that someone wrote a description of (= described) the design in that
> book. If you change it to "is described", it means that there is a
> description on the (old) design, with nothing said about when the
> description was written.

I think this is a correct analysis of grammar - both are correct, with
slightly different meanings.  I actually find both phrasings a bit
awkward, though.  What we're really trying to do here is provide the
links, but that is sometimes better done in a footnote or bibliography
than in the middle of a body of text.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

---

From: Susanne Ebrecht <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2011 09:56:39 +0200

On 31.03.2011 18:11, Robert Haas wrote:
> I actually find both phrasings a bit
> ... What we're really trying to do here is provide the

Honestly, I like the idea for the  future.
I think the effort doing it in existing docs is too high - but for future
docs it is great.

I have another argument for it:

During translating the tutorial I found another sentence - referring books
for SQL beginners.

After very long thinking and after chatting about it with Peter - I 
skipped the
sentence German translation.

I translate the documentation into German mostly for ppl who are not able
to speak English. It is not a good style to tell people here that when 
they want
to learn SQL they should read English books - besides
there is a translated version of the books - which wasn't the case.

I would not have such a big problem here with translation when links to 
books
would be just in a footnote - it don't look such painful to refer to 
English books in
footnotes, when the books aren't available in German.

Just my 2Cent,

Susanne