[MPlayer-DOCS] CVS: main/DOCS/xml/en mencoder.xml,1.64,1.65

[The Wanderer]

Diego Biurrun wrote:

> On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 07:36:53PM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 06:38:09PM +0200, Guillaume POIRIER wrote:

>>> Seems good to me... the problem is that I'm not even sure of my
>>> competence to comment on such proposition, as my English is not
>>> so good, and that all those changes on Rich's original text might
>>> pervert the original meaning.
>>> 
>>> Rich, what do you think?
>> 
>> The change is wrong. "for which it should be shown" is connected to
>> the world "fields", and the meaning changes if you put it after
>> "header of each frame". If you want you could use:
>> 
>> "and store the number of fields for which each frame should be
>> shown in its [respective] header"
>> 
>> Personally I like the original wording best but I'm not particular.
> 
> I'm completely confused now.  This is what we have ATM:
> 
>   The MPEG-2 standard used on DVD and digital TV provides a way to both
>   encode the original progressive frames and store in the header of
>   each frame the number of fields for which it should be shown.
> 
> This sentence is confusing, as the discussion we're having shows.  Is
> it correct?  The last "it" is not good since it is unclear what it
> stands for.

I don't think the antecedent is unclear (although I may be biased, since
I was the one who wrote that phrasing); the most recent non-plural noun,
thus the most recent for which "it" would be a valid pronoun, is
"frame", which unless I'm much mistaken is what is being displayed for
multiple fields. If you want to completely eliminate the ambiguity you
could just say "that frame" instead, but I've been specifically trying
to avoid things like that, since it reads a little clunkily to me...

> Here is the alternative I propose:
> 
>   The MPEG-2 standard used on DVD and digital TV provides a way both to
>   encode the original progressive frames and to store the number of
>   fields for which a frame should be shown in the frame header.
> 
> Correct?  Less confusing?

That looks to me as if it has the same meaning as I was shooting for,
except that (for the sake of complete exactitude) I would probably say
"in the header of that frame" (and/or "for which each frame should be
shown"); that probably reads a little too clumsily, however, so I might
not insist on it.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.