From: David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com>
"Jonathan Turkanis" <technews@kangaroologic.com> writes:
David Abrahams wrote:
"Jonathan Turkanis" <technews@kangaroologic.com> writes:
I have exactly the same situation in Iostreams. I give each function its own page of documentation, with tables demonstrating how the semantics depends on the properties of the template parameters. For example:
www.boost.org/libs/iostreams/doc/?page=functions/read.html%23reference
not bad. A nit:
The semantics of read depends on the category of T as follows ^ ^ "semantics" is plural, so drop the "s" here.
Are you sure? I'd say it's a mass noun.
What's a mass noun? e.g., "Water?"
I'd never heard of "mass noun" before, either. (If I did, it was in elementary or middle school and I don't recall learning it. I don't recall a lot from back then!) I looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun to get more information (I'm going to have to edit that page; there are some awkward things on it!). I certainly know about mass nouns, but never knew what they were called. Thanks for the grammatical lesson Jonathan!
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=semantics seems to indicate it could go either way, if I am reading it correctly. Oh, well.
I think "semantics" being "the study..." means that it should be treated as a mass noun. I can't grok M-W's "noun plural but singular or plural in construction."
I guess it would read more easily if you'd replace "semantics" with "effect."
Indeed. That would resolve the matter handily. -- Rob Stewart stewart@sig.com Software Engineer http://www.sig.com Susquehanna International Group, LLP using std::disclaimer;