We removed the initial comparison to email headers in the previous
commit. Now the introduction paragraph just says “trailer lines”, and
the only hint that this is metadata/structured information is the
“otherwise free-form” phrase.
Let’s replace “lines” with “metadata” since that is their purpose.
This also makes the introduction more consistent with how I chose
to define trailers in the glossary:[1] “Key-value metadata”. (We will
introduce “key–value” in the upcoming commit “explain the format after
the intro”.)
† 1:
68e3c69e (Documentation/glossary: describe "trailer", 2024-11-17)
Let’s not emphasize “trailer” here since we are going to define the term
in the upcoming commit “explain the format after the intro”.
Let’s call it “trailer metadata” rather than “trailers metadata”.
At first it seemed better to use the latter:
1. We’re introducing the jargon, and the format is often discussed as
plural “trailers”, with its constituent parts being singular
“trailer”
2. What this replaces uses “trailer”, but it rescues the plural mood
with “lines”
3. This is very soon going to go into the constituent parts, including
each trailer, so we’re contrasting the concept name (trailers) with
its parts
But:
1. The former reads better (most important)
2. “Trailer *metadata*” suggests plurality, similar to “trailer *lines*”
Helped-by: Matt Hunter <m@lfurio.us>
Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>