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From: burley@geech.ai.mit.edu (Craig Burley)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: I always thought there was something burning in that computer...
Message-ID: <BURLEY.91Jan7080758@geech.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 91 13:07:58 GMT
References: <5836@labtam.labtam.oz>
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In-reply-to: scott@labtam.labtam.oz's message of 7 Jan 91 05:36:49 GMT

In article <5836@labtam.labtam.oz> scott@labtam.labtam.oz (Scott Colwell) writes:

	   "System performance is also dependent upon the speed of peripheral
   devices. The speed of standard bus architectures is fixed to maintain
   _combustibility_. However, the new standard buses (EISA and MCA) allow ..."

   So does ISA stand for Industry Standard Arsonist ?

   (perhaps this is a good anecdote for what can happen when you use an
   automated spelling checker)

Or worse, an editor/proofreader who doesn't have any useful amount of
technological knowledge and either lets such a mistake slip through, or --
my guess in this case -- actually "corrects" the text without checking with
the author.  While working as a tech writer, I saw this kind of thing happen
plenty of times.  The most valuable editor either is a technical expert or,
easier to find, someone who has the good sense to check their "corrections"
with the author no matter how "obvious" they are.  Luckily, I was allowed
to be the only person with on-line access to my own documents, and as a
result, I usually ended up working with real smart editors -- either they
started out that way or they learned on the job (as when I'd come back
with their marked-up manuscript and describe the implications of the
"purely editorial change" they'd just made).  Plus, in almost every instance
of an incorrect edit, I'd discover that I could have made the context
clearer (not hinging on a critical and rather technical word like
"compatibility", the word I assume was meant above) and therefore less prone
to misinterpretation.  For example, "The speed of standard bus
architecture is fixed to maintain _greek-word_ -- allowing devices of
many different types and speeds to connect to the same bus, as long as
they can communicate at the fixed speed of that bus."  At this point,
one can replace "to maintain _greek-word_ -- allowing" with ", so that",
and discard any complicated word.  Of course, when writing only to a
real technical audience, that gets pretty verbose, and words like
"compatibility" aren't necessarily greek-words!  But a paragraph beginning
as does the one above doesn't strike me as written for techies.  In fact,
I might even add (assuming I'm technically correct -- and busses are not
my area of expertise) something like "If the fixed speed of a particular
bus architecture is set too high, then fewer affordable devices can
connect to it properly, even though those that do will usually offer
higher performance.  Similarly, if the speed is set too low, then while many
low-end devices can connect to it, higher-end devices will not be able
to offer significant extra speed on that bus.  Because new, faster models
of computers and peripheral devices are inevitable, any fixed-speed bus
architecture is likely to be considered too slow at about the time it
also becomes affordable to a large market.  A way to extend the life span
of a bus architecture is to design it to offer a low minimum requirement
for device speed but allow higher-end devices to connect to it at
higher speeds as well.  Although there must still be a maximum speed
for such a bus, it can be much higher than the minimum speed offered by
the bus, and this permits a wider price/performance range of devices to
connect to it.  The new standard buses (EISA and MCA) are buses of this
type..."

Of course, if I was a really good writer, I'd have split up the above
paragraph into multiple paragraphs, proofread what I wrote, and so on.
(At least I no longer write paragraphs like the above consisting of a
single sentence!)
--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    burley@ai.mit.edu