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Re: [ITP] neon (A WebDAV library required by Subversion)


Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> On Mon, 3 May 2004, Robert Collins wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 21:56, Max Bowsher wrote:
>>> Reini Urban wrote:
>>>> Max Bowsher schrieb:
>>>>> sdesc: "An HTTP and WebDAV client library"
>>>>
>>>> ===== neon =======
>>>> sdesc: "A HTTP and WebDAV client library"
>>>>
>>>> ===== libneon24 =======
>>>>> sdesc: "Runtime library component of Neon - an HTTP and WebDAV client
>>>>> library"
>>>>
>>>> sdesc: "Runtime library component of Neon - a HTTP and WebDAV client
>>>> library"
>>>
>>> I disagree, and so does the neon website.
>>
>> And you're both wrong. An Apple, A Car.
>>
>> Rob
>
> Or "an Aych-Tee-Tee-Pee"...  Acronyms can go by either spelling or
> pronunciation.  I hate to get in on what's essentially a grammatic
> discussion, but I'd say the W3C has the final authority on the matter...
> Or it would, if it could be consistent enough.  E.g. [rfc2626 = HTTP/1.1]:
>
> $ wget -q -O- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt | sed 's/\(an\?
>       http\)/\n\1/ig' | grep -i 'a http' | wc -l 5
> $ wget -q -O- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt | sed 's/\(an\?
>      http\)/\n\1/ig' | grep -i 'an http' | wc -l 68
> $
>
> So, the jury's still out on this one.  The majority seems to lean Max's
> way, FWIW, and is on the increase (the score for rfc1945 [HTTP/1.0] was
> 4/23 [a/an]).  IMO, if Tim Berners-Lee can use "an", who are we to argue?
;-)
> Igor

IMO, a/an exist because of pronunciation. On that basis, "An HTTP" is
correct.

I've never consiously thought (until now) about whether to say "A HTTP
client" or "An HTTP client". "An" just seemed the obvious choice by analogy
with other pronunciations. Do some people choose to say "A HTTP client"? The
sound pattern "A aitch" is so uncommon in English as to sound distinctly
strange to me, so I would be surprised if many people did.

Max.


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