[ruby-talk:01876] Re: Minor irritation, can't figure out how to patch it though!

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> 
> Hmm, Ruby may be too Americanized. :-)

:-) No worse/better than being too British.  It would be nice to 
support existing variants.
 
The module would work, but it would have to be deliberately included
in users' code, which is more effort than correcting the 's' to a 'z'.
Maybe making the language more flexible so the user doesn't have to 
be is too big a cost for such a minor matter, but if it is possible
to enhance the core language it would be nice.  I don't think many
who use American English will have code with their own methods called
initialise(), so I don't think a change would break much code, but
of course I cannot tell.

On 15 Mar 2000, Dave Thomas wrote:

> I just checked in my Oxford English Dictionary (Compact edition - the
> one you need a magnifying glass to read). It favours 'initialize' with
> a 'z'. I seem to remember Fowler says the same. It might be an
> interesting project to look through some authoritative references - I
> _think_ this is a case where the academics disagree with popular
> spelling.
> 

The Oxford dictionaries are built on observation of English as it is
used, rather than academic standards, so it could be that British
English is being Americani(s|z)ed over time :-).  A non-authoritative
source, `spell -b`, supports initialised rather than initialized,
and Shakespeare would have spelt it any way he liked!

So it seems there is a choice, hence my suggestion that Ruby treat
both forms identically.  I think the big cost would be: What happens
when someone defines both methods?  Maybe it *is* too much of a change....

	Hugh 
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