Odile,



Thank you for your patience with me and my strong feelings about grammar.  Your detailed explanation was very helpful.  I hope I haven't offended.  You will know that the process of communication is fraught with many opportunities for confusion.  For example, callout (1) talks of user roles, and the perception may be that this is any end-user of the system.  The subject of callout (3) is a developer, only one kind of end-user.  It is an unwritten assumption that the user is a developer or at least may be.  I suppose that this is somehow understood from the environment of the figure.  The metaphor of "role" is acting on a stage; the "playing" of the role is only anticipated and hence spoken of as "assuming" the role, i.e., putting on the mask or costume.  The application of the word has been generalized.  There also seems to be an underlying assumption that there is a difference between "permissions" and "credentials:" the former being a specialized term (the plural sounds foreign to English), and the latter an ordinary reference to their use.  



Diagrams or figures are extended metaphors or allegories.  In this environment they attempt to propose a conformance between a model of a process and the process itself.  Whenever such a conformance to objects in the imaginary or the real world is attempted, some language is appealed to.  The language brings with it quite a bit of baggage; it has its own set of metaphors and allegories.  The abstraction of concepts from the world, the model, and the language is often inextricably mixed.  Some concepts are imposed by our everyday model of the world, e.g., our culture, some by the particular constructed model, e.g., our figures or diagrams, and some by the model of the world that comes with the natural language of English.  People acquainted with foreign languages find that they have their own models and can usually make divisions between the cultures of the various peoples that speak the languages.  Our modern culture is beset by a great diversity of cultural mindsets all with different allegories and metaphors.  The same phenomenon is apparent in people of different generations using the "same" language.  It is all too easy to offend one another when we are stuck on our own models of the world, no matter their origin.  [It is hard today not to see violence as the acting out of the metaphor of a "battle" between "good" and "evil," each party trying to assume the same role.  A reality without violence must lie beyond this simple and pervasive metaphor.]



Bruce



--- [log in to unmask] wrote:



From: Odile Sullivan-Tarazi <[log in to unmask]>

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Computerese

Date:         Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:31:16 -0700



Bruce,



Strong words! Well, the figure callouts were probably written in 

first draft by whichever developer the writer is working with. And 

those callouts probably sound very odd indeed to anyone not 

accustomed to this writing environment. Like any technical or 

professional environment, it has its own language and some of that is 

very necessary and useful. The audience for this documentation is 

almost certainly other developers, and so the various abbreviated 

forms and what might otherwise sound odd (the particular thing a 

"role" is in this context, for example) will be familiar stuff.



If this were a book for end users, or if this were a textbook, the 

language would be very different. At the very least, the process 

analysis would be cleaned up to something like this --



      1. The system administrator creates the user role.

      2. The system administrator then sets role permissions.

      3. The developer sends a request to assume the role.

      4. [ProductX] returns the appropriate credentials for the role session.

      5. Using those permissions, the developer updates the /app folder.



Item 3 might even be instead "The developer calls the AssumeRole 

function," which is more precisely what is happening. But then the 

other items ought to be reworded accordingly, to reflect at a deeper 

level what each action entails.



A "callout" is a, well I suppose it's a publication term. It's a 

label used to identify parts of a figure, distinct from the caption 

(which titles the entire figure) or a legend (which adds additional 

information to the caption). A figure can be any sort of illustration 

or diagram or chart or whatever, though generally not tabular. 

Tabular info is numbered and titled in a distinct series, as tables.



You can find callouts discussed in any style guide that addresses the 

graphics of figures: Chicago, APA, AAA, and so on. They are not 

discussed in the MLA, not that I can find, at any rate, and I'm 

supposing that's because the MLA is used more for academic papers 

within the realm of the university, papers written in a word 

processing program where there is not the formatting capability for 

producing callouts, or indeed most types of figures. In a published 

book, however, they sometimes do come into play. And any figure 

complex enough to benefit from such can include callouts: the context 

need not have anything to do with computers.







Odile









At 6:35 AM -0700 9/14/12, Bruce Despain wrote:

>Odile,

>

>Please disregard this message, if I'm beating a dead horse.  It was 

>in disgust that I deleted your messages prematurely yesterday.  I 

>had not at first realized that your "callouts" were done by data 

>analysts, many of whom manifest a characteristic disregard for 

>natural language.  I think this feeling is reinforced 

>by philosophers who often express their consternation with the 

>weaknesses of human language.  (Mathematicians have largely 

>abandoned the use of natural language.)  I have worked with computer 

>programmers for years and should have known better.  In any case I 

>myself have long harbored a distain for the grammar of computerese 

>and the argot of texters, brought on by software developers often 

>with narrowly developed skills.  The latest (1999) dictionary in my 

>library does not even include this meaning of "callout."

>

>The process of assuming a role has probably been separated out and 

>was probably made part of the callout for clarity in what was more 

>accurately called out as a simple request for a role.  If other 

>requests were present along the same chain, it might make sense to 

>summarize the anticipated process of assuming the role requested. 

>The processes might suggest to the programmer that the developer 

>should confirm his request for a role before the role is assigned. 

>There is probably a "confirming" by the developer and then an 

>"assigning" by the software.  The result is that the "developer 

>assumes role requested."

>

>Bruce

>

>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web 

>interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and 

>select "Join or leave the list"

>

>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/



To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:

     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html

and select "Join or leave the list"



Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/