svn commit: r44225 - head/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports
Warren Block
wblock at FreeBSD.org
Thu Mar 13 03:28:48 UTC 2014
Author: wblock
Date: Thu Mar 13 03:28:47 2014
New Revision: 44225
URL: http://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/doc/44225
Log:
Fix numerous style problems, remove many uses of "you" and "your"
(leaving only a few thousand), kinda sorta maybe remove some instances
of passive voice, remove and reduce repeated redundancy, add some IDs to
sections.
Modified:
head/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.xml
Modified: head/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.xml
==============================================================================
--- head/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.xml Thu Mar 13 03:00:53 2014 (r44224)
+++ head/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.xml Thu Mar 13 03:28:47 2014 (r44225)
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@
it.</para>
<para>This document attempts to describe how to write good problem
- reports. What, you ask, is a good problem report? Well, to go
+ reports. What, one asks, is a good problem report? Well, to go
straight to the bottom line, a good problem report is one that
can be analyzed and dealt with swiftly, to the mutual
satisfaction of both user and developer.</para>
@@ -56,37 +56,37 @@
software projects.</para>
<para>Note that this article is organized thematically, not
- chronologically, so you should read through the entire document
- before submitting a problem report, rather than treat it as a
+ chronologically. Read the entire document
+ before submitting a problem report, rather than treating it as a
step-by-step tutorial.</para>
</section>
<section xml:id="pr-when">
- <title>When to submit a problem report</title>
+ <title>When to Submit a Problem Report</title>
<para>There are many types of problems, and not all of them should
engender a problem report. Of course, nobody is perfect, and
- there will be times when you are convinced you have found a bug
- in a program when in fact you have misunderstood the syntax for
- a command or made a typographical error in a configuration file
+ there will be times when what seems to be a bug
+ in a program is, in fact, a misunderstanding of the syntax for
+ a command or a typographical error in a configuration file
(though that in
itself may sometimes be indicative of poor documentation or poor
error handling in the application). There are still many cases
where submitting a problem report is clearly
<emphasis>not</emphasis> the right
- course of action, and will only serve to frustrate you and the
+ course of action, and will only serve to frustrate both the submitter and the
developers. Conversely, there are cases where it might be
appropriate to submit a problem report about something else than
a bug—an enhancement or a new feature, for
instance.</para>
- <para>So how do you determine what is a bug and what is not? As a
- simple rule of thumb your problem is <emphasis>not</emphasis> a
+ <para>So how does one determine what is a bug and what is not? As a
+ simple rule of thumb, the problem is <emphasis>not</emphasis> a
bug if it can be expressed as a question (usually of the form
<quote>How do I do X?</quote> or <quote>Where can I find
Y?</quote>). It is not always quite so black and white, but the
- question rule covers a large majority of cases. If you are looking
- for an answer, consider posing your question to the
+ question rule covers a large majority of cases. When looking
+ for an answer, consider posing the question to the
&a.questions;.</para>
<para>Some cases where it may be appropriate to submit a problem
@@ -163,20 +163,20 @@
but are instead part of the &os; Ports Collection (category
<literal>ports</literal>). Most of these applications are
not written by &os; developers; what &os; provides is merely
- a framework for installing the application. Therefore, you
- should only report a problem to the &os; developers when you
- believe the problem is &os;-specific; otherwise, you should
+ a framework for installing the application. Therefore,
+ only report a problem to the &os; developers when the
+ problem is believed to be &os;-specific; otherwise,
report it to the authors of the software.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
- <para>Then you should ascertain whether or not the problem is
+ <para>Then, ascertain whether the problem is
timely. There are few things
that will annoy a developer more than receiving a problem report
about a bug she has already fixed.</para>
- <para>If the problem is in the base system, you should first read
+ <para>If the problem is in the base system, first read
the FAQ section on
<link xlink:href="&url.books.faq;/introduction.html#LATEST-VERSION">
&os; versions</link>, if you are not already familiar with
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@
<title>Preparations</title>
<para>A good rule to follow is to always do a background search
- before submitting a problem report. Maybe your problem has
+ before submitting a problem report. Maybe the problem has
already been reported; maybe it is being discussed on the
mailing lists, or recently was; it may even already be fixed in
a newer version than what you are running. You should therefore
@@ -228,15 +228,15 @@
<link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/eresources.html#ERESOURCES-MAIL">mailing
lists</link>—if you are not subscribed, use
<link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/search/search.html#mailinglists">the
- searchable archives</link> on the &os; web site. If your
+ searchable archives</link> on the &os; web site. If the
problem has not been discussed on the lists, you might try
posting a message about it and waiting a few days to see if
- someone can spot something you have overlooked.</para>
+ someone can spot something that has been overlooked.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Optionally, the entire web—use your favorite
- search engine to locate any references to your problem. You
+ search engine to locate any references to the problem. You
may even get hits from archived mailing lists or newsgroups
you did not know of or had not thought to search
through.</para>
@@ -245,19 +245,19 @@
<listitem>
<para>Next, the searchable
<link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi?query">
- &os; PR database</link> (GNATS). Unless your problem
+ &os; PR database</link> (GNATS). Unless the problem
is recent or obscure, there is a fair chance it has already
been reported.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
- <para>Most importantly, you should attempt to see if existing
+ <para>Most importantly, attempt to see if existing
documentation in the source base addresses your problem.</para>
<para>For the base &os; code, you should
- carefully study the contents of the
- <filename>/usr/src/UPDATING</filename> file on your system
- or its latest version at
+ carefully study the contents of
+ <filename>/usr/src/UPDATING</filename> on your system
+ or the latest version at
<uri xlink:href="http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/UPDATING?view=log">http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/UPDATING?view=log</uri>.
(This is vital information
if you are upgrading from one version to
@@ -278,7 +278,7 @@
</section>
<section xml:id="pr-writing">
- <title>Writing the problem report</title>
+ <title>Writing the Problem Report</title>
<para>Now that you have decided that your issue merits a problem
report, and that it is a &os; problem, it is time to write
@@ -287,8 +287,8 @@
tips and tricks to help make sure that your PR will be most
effective.</para>
- <section>
- <title>Tips and tricks for writing a good problem report</title>
+ <section xml:id="pr-writing-tips">
+ <title>Tips and Tricks for Writing a Good Problem Report</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
@@ -351,7 +351,7 @@
<para>Include the version of &os; you are running (there
is a place to put that, see below) and on which architecture.
You should include whether you are running from a release
- (e.g. from a CDROM or download), or from
+ (e.g., from a <acronym>CD-ROM</acronym> or download), or from
a system maintained by Subversion (and, if so,
what revision number you are at). If you are tracking the
&os.current; branch, that is the very first thing someone
@@ -506,52 +506,52 @@
</itemizedlist>
</section>
- <section>
- <title>Before you begin</title>
+ <section xml:id="pr-writing-before-beginning">
+ <title>Before Beginning</title>
- <para>If you are using the &man.send-pr.1; program, make sure your
+ <para>When using the &man.send-pr.1; program, make sure the
<envar>VISUAL</envar> (or <envar>EDITOR</envar> if
<envar>VISUAL</envar> is not set) environment variable is set
to something sensible.</para>
- <para>You should also make sure that mail delivery works fine.
+ <para>Make sure that mail delivery is working.
&man.send-pr.1; uses mail messages for the submission and
- tracking of problem reports. If you cannot post mail messages
- from the machine you are running &man.send-pr.1; on, your
+ tracking of problem reports. If mail messages cannot be sent
+ from the machine running &man.send-pr.1;, the
problem report will not reach the GNATS database. For details
on the setup of mail on &os;, see the <quote>Electronic
Mail</quote> chapter of the &os; Handbook at
<uri xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail.html">http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail.html</uri>.</para>
- <para>Make sure that your mailer will not mangle the message on
- its way to GNATS. In particular, if your mailer automatically
+ <para>Make sure that the mailer does not mangle the message on
+ its way to GNATS. In particular, if the mailer automatically
breaks lines, changes tabs to spaces, or escapes newline
- characters, any patch that you submit will be rendered
- unusable. For the text sections, however, we request that
- you insert manual linebreaks somewhere around 70 characters,
+ characters, any patch will be rendered
+ unusable. For the text sections, however, we request the
+ insertion of manual linebreaks somewhere around 70 characters,
so that the web display of the PR will be readable.</para>
- <para>Similar considerations apply if you are using the
+ <para>Similar considerations apply to use of the
<link xlink:href="&url.base;/send-pr.html"> web-based
- PR submission form</link> instead of &man.send-pr.1;. Note that
+ PR submission form</link>. Note that
cut-and-paste operations can have their own side-effects on
text formatting. In certain cases it may be necessary to use
&man.uuencode.1; to ensure that patches arrive unmodified.</para>
- <para>Finally, if your submission will be lengthy, you should
- to prepare your work offline so that nothing will be lost in
- case there is a problem submitting it. This can especially be a
+ <para>Finally, if the submission is lengthy,
+ prepare the work offline so that nothing will be lost if
+ there is a problem submitting it. This can especially be a
problem with the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/send-pr.html">web form</link>.</para>
</section>
- <section>
- <title>Attaching patches or files</title>
+ <section xml:id="pr-writing-attaching-patches">
+ <title>Attaching Patches or Files</title>
<para>The following applies to submitting PRs via email:</para>
<para>The &man.send-pr.1; program has provisions for attaching
files to a problem report. You can attach as many files as
- you want provided that each has a unique base name (i.e. the
+ you want provided that each has a unique base name (i.e., the
name of the file proper, without the path). Just use the
<option>-a</option> command-line option to specify the names
of the files you wish to attach:</para>
@@ -561,8 +561,8 @@
<para>Do not worry about binary files, they will be automatically
encoded so as not to upset your mail agent.</para>
- <para>If you attach a patch, make sure you use the
- <option>-c</option> or <option>-u</option> option to
+ <para>When attaching a patch, be sure to use
+ <option>-c</option> or <option>-u</option> with
&man.diff.1; to create a context or unified diff (unified is
preferred), and make
sure to specify the exact SVN revision numbers of the files
@@ -605,13 +605,13 @@
same terms as the original file you modified.</para>
</section>
- <section>
- <title>Filling out the template</title>
+ <section xml:id="pr-writing-filling-template">
+ <title>Filling out the Template</title>
<para>The next section applies to the email method only:</para>
- <para>When you run &man.send-pr.1;, you are presented with a
- template. The template consists of a list of fields, some of
+ <para>&man.send-pr.1; presents a
+ template consisting of a list of fields, some of
which are pre-filled, and some of which have comments explaining
their purpose or listing acceptable values. Do not worry
about the comments; they will be removed automatically if you
@@ -871,7 +871,7 @@
</note>
<example>
- <title>Correct use of arch-specific category</title>
+ <title>Correct Use of Arch-Specific Category</title>
<para>You have a common PC-based machine, and think
you have encountered a problem specific to a particular
@@ -880,7 +880,7 @@
</example>
<example>
- <title>Incorrect use of arch-specific category</title>
+ <title>Incorrect Use of Arch-Specific Category</title>
<para>You are having a problem with an add-in
peripheral card on a commonly seen bus, or a problem with
@@ -1092,8 +1092,8 @@
</itemizedlist>
</section>
- <section>
- <title>Sending off the problem report</title>
+ <section xml:id="pr-writing-sending">
+ <title>Sending the Problem Report</title>
<para>If you are using &man.send-pr.1;:</para>
@@ -1141,7 +1141,7 @@
<section xml:id="pr-followup">
<title>Follow-up</title>
- <para>Once your problem report has been filed, you will receive a
+ <para>Once the problem report has been filed, you will receive a
confirmation by email which will include the tracking number
that was assigned to your problem report and a URL you can use
to check its status. With a little luck, someone will take an
@@ -1161,7 +1161,7 @@
<para>The easiest way is to use the followup link on
the individual PR's web page, which you can reach from the
<link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi?query">
- PR search page</link>. Clicking on this link will bring up an
+ PR search page</link>. Clicking on this link will bring up
an email window with the correct To: and Subject: lines filled in
(if your browser is configured to do this).</para>
</listitem>
@@ -1199,7 +1199,7 @@
</section>
<section xml:id="pr-problems">
- <title>If you are having problems</title>
+ <title>If There Are Problems</title>
<para>Most PRs go through the system and are accepted quickly;
however, at times GNATS runs behind and you may not get your
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