[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [PATCH] more small directional cleanups

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 03:41:37AM -0700, Trent Piepho wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Raimar Falke wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 02:05:35AM -0700, Trent Piepho wrote:
> > > Yes, I think is_normal_pos and is_real_pos are better names too.  But
> > > is_real_tile and some other is_x_tile functions already exist, so I 
> > > thought
> > > consistency was more important.
> > 
> > IMHO not for long term maintainability.
> 
> Well if you want to change them all to _pos, go ahead.  I didn't think it was
> worth the effort for what is really a minor difference.
> 
> > However, in technical usage when we say that something is
> > "normalised", we do not mean to say that it is "plain and
> > unsurprising".  What we mean is that the object has been replaced by
> > one with a convenient and / or pleasing _representation_, not that the
> 
> He's saying the same thing I was, and the same thing the dictionary says.
> "normalized" means something has been changed so that it is normal.

[ I'm not a native speaker. ]

The term "normal" is used in common speech. The term "normal" refers
to a "plain" object or a "uneventful" time or an object which lacks a
special property. So if for example this special property of a tile is
that the tile has a road the methods could be named
"is_tile_with_road/is_normal_tile". If the special property is that a
enemy unit is on the tile:
"does_tile_contains_enemy_unit/is_normal_tile". So the meaning of
"normal" depends on what is unnormal.

The term "normali[sz]e(d)" is a technical term. It means that the
object is in the preferred/a pleasing representation. 

> > > If you use normalized instead of normal you are saying that the
> > > position was, at one time, _not_ normal, and then was made so.  If
> > > the position was normal all along, then it was never normalized.
> > 
> > So I change it to "is_now_normalized_a_position" but this gets a bit
> > to long.
> 
> The sentence, "Is this normal?" is perfectly acceptable.  The sentence, "Is
> this normalized?" is not correct.  It should be, "Was this normalized?" And to
> answer the latter question, I could respond, "No, it was normal to begin
> with."

"Is this a normalized position" is true for me iff the normalization
would yield the same position.

> Or replace normal with a more common word to make it clearer.
> 
> normal ~= dead       (both adjectives)
> normalize ~= kill    (both verbs, which make the adjective true)
> normalized ~= killed (both past particple forms of the verb)
> 
> It is normalized.  He is killed.         BAD!
> It was normalized.  He was killed.       OK
> It is normal.   He is dead.              BETTER

I agree that based on this relation it should be named your way. But
normal isn't just explicit enough.

        Raimar

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