Poor example in "Look Ma! No Network!

[Ben Collins-Sussman]

As a primary book author, allow me to step into your squabble.  :-)

Johannes:  you're right, the cached text-base isn't strictly necessary
to send diffs during a commit.

However, that sidebar *doesn't* say that the text-base exists solely
for the purpose of efficient commits.  If you read the whole
paragraph, it says that the text-base exists to "manage your changes
without a network", so that commands like 'svn status', 'svn diff',
and 'svn revert' work on an airplane.  Then it goes on to say that the
cached file *also* enables the 'svn commit' command to send diffs.

I don't see how anything is incorrect or distorted here.  If quoted
out of context, yes, it sounds like we're claiming the cache is
necessary for efficient commits.  If you read the whole paragraph,
we're simply saying that the efficient commits are just an extra bonus
feature resulting from the cache.