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I think what people are actually saying is that some of the users
we're writing for find the word "abort" offensive or disturbing
even in a computer context. I have no problem with the word, myself,
but I also see no point in upsetting people for no reason.
(For example, it is reasonable for a hospital record to say
"spontaneous abortion," because that is the standard medical term
for what most laypeople call "miscarriage," but as you point out,
the computer usage has nothing to do with abortion, so we may as
well make people more comfortable.) For that matter, it would be
nice to have a message that made more sense than "abort, retry,
fail"--it's not clear from the message, and I have never seen it
explained, what the difference between "abort" and "fail" is in
this context.
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr%acmcr -dot- uucp -at- murphy -dot- com
New York, NY
(I tried sending this directly to Beth Volbach and got it
back from uunet; I hope the list finds it interesting. VR)
