[Glade-users] Deprecate

[Bill Cairns]

Please accept my deep apologies.

I really did try and say that I was not making a personal attack on 
anyone, but that I had deep regrets about a word being used incorrectly 
when there is a perfectly good word that could be used instead.

And yes, I have read the dictionary (in fact I looked in three paper 
dictionaries and two on-line ones).  But just because a word is in the 
dictionary does not mean it is a good word. Dictionaries are 
descriptive, not prescriptive: they tell you what people mean by a word, 
not whether it is a good word.

But I am upset that you are upset. I really did not mean to attack you 
in any way. I certainly don't think that I was "spamming" the list 
either. (From your source: "spam"  Unsolicited e-mail, often of a 
commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, 
individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.) I did not express myself well 
when I said that "deprecate" was restricted to the Open Source 
community. I meant that the OS community was where I had first 
encountered it.

So please put this down to an old man's intemperance and forgive me. 
(And please keep on using "deprecate" if you think that it is the best 
word. Once words escape there is no catching them again).

Bill



Tadej Borovšak wrote:
> Hello.
>
> First, read this link: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deprecation
> (especially definition number 3). Do you still think that it was open
> source community who added another meaning to the term?
>
> I didn't take this rant personally, since I only used the words of
> official developers (if you read API docs, there is a lot of stuff
> marked as being deprecated), but spamming this mailing list without
> even checking the dictionary first does annoy me enough to respond.
>
> BTW, I'm not a native English speaker and I'm sure I misuse many
> words, but deprecated doesn't seem to be among abused ones.
>
> Tadej
>
>