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Bug 21728 - [HTML] editorial: 4.10.20: "either are greater"
Summary: [HTML] editorial: 4.10.20: "either are greater"
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: WHATWG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 trivial
Target Milestone: Unsorted
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: contributor
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-04-17 04:28 UTC by Michael Dyck
Modified: 2013-07-15 22:28 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Michael Dyck 2013-04-17 04:28:37 UTC
In 4.10.20 "APIs for the text field selections",
in the algorithm for setRangeText(...),
step 3 says:
    If either start or end are greater than the length of ...

Change "are" to "is".
Comment 1 Michael Dyck 2013-04-17 05:14:06 UTC
Similarly in 5.4.1.1 "Conversion to vCard",
step 12 says:
    If either of sex or gender-identity have a value ...
Comment 2 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2013-04-19 23:36:51 UTC
Hmm. Is there a grammatical argument to be made that this is short for "either or both of", and would that get the plural conjugation?

I want to avoid implying that if both cases match the criteria, that the condition is not met, without being overly verbose about it.
Comment 3 Michael Dyck 2013-04-20 05:35:41 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> Hmm. Is there a grammatical argument to be made that this is short for
> "either or both of", and would that get the plural conjugation?

That might be a bit subtle for some readers of the spec, especially those who aren't native speakers of English.

Moreover, that argument might suggest that the *singular* form is short for
"either but *not* both", which you probably don't want. E.g.:

    either its horizontal dimension or its vertical dimension is zero
    either dirtyWidth or dirtyHeight is negative or zero
    either x or y is less than 0
    either name, http-equiv, or itemprop is specified
    either of the arguments is infinite or NaN
    If either fails

In some of those, it *can't* be both, but in some it probably can, and I'm guessing you want to implicitly include the "or both".

> I want to avoid implying that if both cases match the criteria, that the
> condition is not met, without being overly verbose about it.

Maybe the best thing is to just say so somewhere in the introductory material.

You could also point out that in cases where you *do* want to exclude the "or both" case, the spec uses explicit constructions such as:
 -- If just one of either w or h is zero 
 -- either a rel attribute or an itemprop attribute, but not both.
Comment 4 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2013-06-04 20:47:23 UTC
Yeah, fair enough.
Comment 5 contributor 2013-06-04 20:48:53 UTC
Checked in as WHATWG revision r7898.
Check-in comment: Improve grammar.
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=7897&to=7898