[mpi3-coll] Non-blocking Collectives Proposal Draft

[Torsten Hoefler]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 03:24:49PM -0500, Rajeev Thakur wrote:
> I just walked over to our editor, Gail Pieper, and asked her the reason. She
> said that if the alphabets that the prefix connects are different, as in
> nonblocking or noncontiguous, the convention nowadays is to drop the hyphen.
> You would keep the hyphen in words like re-establish and also in words that
> would read weird without the hyphen, like non-organic (nono rganic). This is
> the convention followed by the Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press
> Manual, and the MLA Manual (Modern Language Association).
hmm, I just read your cited Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) and found:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/ch07/ch07_sec085.html
which reads:
"A hyphen can make for easier reading by showing structure and, often,
pronunciation." ... "Where no ambiguity could result, as in public
welfare administration or graduate student housing, hyphenation is not
mandatory, though it is quite acceptable and preferred by many writers
and editors."

(you should read the complete page)

> > Also, if you do the <pick your favorit search enigne> test (I know ...
> > but languages are dynamically changed by their users), you'll see that
> > non-blocking seems to be the most-used term in the I/O and 
> > communication
> > context.
> 
> Web searches are not useful for this because most people's English is not
> that good.
I strongly disagree. A language is determined by the people who use it,
who defines what the correct language is? Even the CMS says things like:
"With frequent use" or "have become widely accepted,". See
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/ch07/ch07_sec084.html for more of
this :). I know, especially as a German, that a clearly defined language
is preferred, but I think our case is not clearly defined (or can you
cite a particular part of CMS?). 

If we don't have a clear definition, I'd like to go with the unofficial
conventions. Those unofficial conventions can be backed up with web
searches reasonably well (I read the first few results and those were
reasonable hits).

All the Best,
  Torsten

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Torsten Hoefler       | Postdoctoral Researcher
Open Systems Lab      | Indiana University    
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