Bug#649717: Strange wording in package description

Justin B Rye jbr at edlug.org.uk
Wed Jan 11 07:56:22 UTC 2012


Michael Biebl wrote:
> On 23.11.2011 20:48, Justin B Rye wrote:
>>    These simplified icons are symbolic variations on the standard
>>    theme (see http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/SymbolicIcons).
> 
> I guess you mean variations "of" the standard theme (not "on").

Compare "Variations on a Theme by Haydn".  "Symbolic variations" comes
from http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/SymbolicIcons, where the presence
of that phrase is about as close as it gets to justifying the use of
the word "symbolic" - "symbolic icons" struck me as pretty baffling
without some such hint, since all icons are necessarily symbolic (in
that they stand for something other than themselves).

"Variations" as a countable noun is mostly used to refer to works of
classical music; if readers weren't supposed to be thinking along
those lines then the more normal word would be "variants", but it's
too late to fix the phrasing on the fd.o wiki - and if it wasn't an
immutable page then I would prefer to petition for it to be renamed
"StylizedIcons".
-- 
JBR	with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
	sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package





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