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Date:      Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:00:01 -0600 (MDT)
From:      Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To:        doc@freebsd.org
Subject:   FDP and compound words
Message-ID:  <alpine.BSF.2.00.1207241758220.63105@wonkity.com>

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The FDP word list at 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/fdp-primer/writing-style-word-list.html 
specifies the formats for several words that are often used as a single
compound word in our documentation.  For example:

file system
disk label
mail server
name server
web server

Actually, I think the single-word versions of at least the first two are 
more correct.  Some searching found this: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_noun_and_adjective

There's an excellent example: "darkroom".  A darkroom is a different 
thing than a dark room.

To me, filesystem and disklabel are singular.  A filesystem is a thing, 
a single object, while a file system is a group of files and 
directories.  I'm sure there's a name for the
difference between the single- and double-word versions, but don't know 
it.  Many one-word versions are enshrined in code, like the use of 
"nameserver" in resolv.conf.

I propose changing the FDP recommendations for the two-word versions 
above to the single-word versions.

Statistics from SGML files in /usr/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1:

     628 "file system", 513 "filesystem"
      28 "disk label",   65 "disklabel"
      50 "mail server",   3 "mailserver"
      56 "name server",  21 "nameserver"
      74 "web server",   13 "webserver"

Some two-word instances separated by line breaks were probably missed.

After the changes to the FDP, textproc/igor can be updated to detect the 
two-word versions.


Note: no changes are planned to "cabaņa de bicicletas", "Fahrradraum", 
or "Fahrradschuppen".
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