docs/150490: newfs man page clarification

[John Baldwin]

On Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:50:07 am Eitan Adler wrote:
> The following reply was made to PR docs/150490; it has been noted by GNATS.
> 
> From: Eitan Adler <lists at eitanadler.com>
> To: Peter Pentchev <roam at ringlet.net>
> Cc: bug-followup at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: docs/150490: newfs man page clarification
> Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:20:06 -0400
> 
>  > [snip]
>  >> -NB: Erasing may take as long time as writing every sector on the disk.
>  >> +NB: Erasing may take as long time as it writes to every sector on the d=
>  isk.
>  >
>  > Uhm, I believe the original wording is correct. =C2=A0The "as" in "as wri=
>  ting" here
>  > does not stand for "because"; it's part of a "as ... as ..." construction
>  > which... oh, well, all right :) =C2=A0I guess it might be a bit clearer t=
>  o say
>  > something like:
>  >
>  > =C2=A0Erasing may take time as long as writing every sector on the disk.
>  >
>  > ...or something like that, though it's not much clearer than the original=
>   :)
>  > The original author's point here is that the time that erasing takes is
>  > as long (a time) as (the time it takes) writing every sector on the disk.
>  >
>  > Or something like that :)
>  >
>  
>  Erasing the disk will take as much time as it takes to write to every
>  sector on the disk.
>  Erasing may take a long time as it writes to every sector on the disk.
>  Erasing will take as much time as writing every sector to disk takes.
>  
>  Take your pick ;-)
>  
>  If it matters I'm a native speaker and the original sentence does not
>  make sense to me as is.

Agreed, all three of those options are better than the original.  I would
probably vote for 2).

-- 
John Baldwin