Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Jeremy Blosser (emrys)" <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>]

On May 05, Andrew [afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com] wrote:
> > It's not that I disagree with sticking with the somewhat default 
> > naming scheme, but I don't feel it will produce any real confusion 
> > if a more themed alternative exists, no more than for example "council
> > of elders" would do; useful to those in the know, irrelevant to those 
> > users who just use sourcemage. 
> 
> The names and meanings of our grimoires is far more relavent to
> both prospective users and regular users than what we call ourselves
> internally (I dont think any of the leads plan on putting 'elder' on
> their resume instead of 'lead'). When you browse for a distro which do
> you think is more likely that you'll look at:

Yeah, but to be fair the names of our utilities are also relevant to our
users and we do a theme there.  In fact, one could argue our utilities are
what matter most to our users, since they basically pick their grimoires
rarely (or just use the default forever) but they always have to use the
utilities, usually daily.  And any arguments about 'non obvious meanings'
can certainly be applied to names like sorcery, cast, scribe, gaze, meld,
etc.

The fact is that 'jargon' names are a feature of unix much older than
sorcery, and our distro is pretty deep with that tradition.  There's a
continuum, though; we've currently put ourselves with themed names for
commands, components, and people, but not for "data" (for lack of a better
term); hence we have gaze and cauldron and elder, but also a 'stable'
branch and the 'mail' section of the grimoire.

It's a mix, and obviously some people want us to go farther, some like it
where it is, and some no doubt think any of it is too much.  There's no
doubt no solution that will please everyone, but I don't think it can be
argued that what we have now is a Completely Logical Solution, or that we
only use themed names internally and not where it would confuse users, or
anything that simple.  It's a fair bit more subjective than that.

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