Re: Make primnodes.h gender neutral

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 4:11 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

> I think it's important that we fix these issues in a way that doesn't
> degrade the readability of the prose, and that doesn't call attention
> to itself as "hey, we're being so politically correct!".  We're trying
> to convey technical information in a way that does not distract the
> reader from the technical content.  Sexist language is a distraction
> for some, in-your-face non-sexism (such as made-up pronouns) is a
> distraction for others, bad or awkward grammar is a distraction for yet
> others.  It's not that easy to write prose that manages not to call
> attention to itself in any of these ways.  But that's what we need to
> do, and s/xxx/yyy/g editing that's only thinking about one of these
> concerns is unlikely to get us there.

+1

> I also concur with Alvaro that fixing these issues one para at a time
> is pretty inefficient.

A grep with a quick skim of the results to exclude references to
particular people who are mentioned by name and then referred to
with a pronoun (which I assume we can leave alone), suggest there
are about 70 lines in the 1346667 line C code base that need work.

Any word-smiths out there who want to volunteer to sort this out?

--
Kevin Grittner
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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