On Monday, March 10, 2003, at 03:53 AM, Frank Sergeant wrote:

> Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin at texoma.net> wrote:
>
>> I don't think it is required that we have the most precise topological
>> descriptions.
>
> No, but I think it would be good to have names that make it easy to get
> a mental handle on.  For that reason, I am not in favor of 'cardinal' 
> or
> even of 'core'->'magma'->'mantle', as cute as they may be, nor of
> 'shell' because of the burden of other meaning it carries.
>
> 'Core' and 'base' fail because it is hard to grasp (and retain) which
> means which!  That was the main point I was trying to make earlier.
> Someone objected to 'kitchen sink' on the basis that not everyone would
> know what it meant.  However, 'kitchen sink' is a good example of a 
> name
> that /communicates/.  It may take explaining /once/ to someone what it
> means, but the meaning will stick with him forever.  For 'core' and
> 'base', at least /I/ would constantly be asking "now, which is which?".

I think Frank's requirements here are good... the names should 
communicate, but they shouldn't have a burden of other meaning which 
could lead to misinterpretation.

The latest names being discussed (Kernel/Coder/Carnival) fit these 
criteria pretty well, I think.  (Would you agree, Frank?)  And the 
alliteration is a nice bonus.  I almost thought the names were a bit 
too cute at first, but I'm growing to like them more, and a little bit 
of non-seriousness can be good.  And none of these names are *nearly* 
as cute as "squeak", anyway. :-)

Carnival - "a feast of sound and light" communicates the idea of a full 
image with sound and graphics and lots of stuff in it quite well.  
Carnival implies "big" too, which is good.  I don't see any misleading 
aspects to the name.  Kitchensink is probably my next favorite, but the 
meaning from the phrase "everything but the kitchen sink" is slightly 
more obscure than Carnival, so I give Carnival the edge.  Kitchensink 
would be acceptable, though, and would still preserve the alliteration. 
  (Cornucopia isn't too bad, either.)  At first I thought a generic name 
like "Full" would be good, but I think that might be too generic.  And 
actually, I think we want words that work as both nouns and adjectives. 
  Full being only an adjective could be annoying.  ("I want this package 
to go in Full" ...sounds weird.)

Coder - I didn't like this one quite as much as Carnival at first, 
somehow "coder" sounds very informal to me, kind of like "hacker".  But 
it is clear in its meaning... it basically means "one who writes code". 
  And this level of image is for the coders, since it will contain just 
the development tools (browsers, etc.).  So it sounds reasonable to me. 
  It definitely communicates better than "Core".  "Dev" is okay, too, 
but perhaps a bit too boring, and we'd lose the nice alliteration.

Kernel - Everyone seems to agree this is the best name for the, um, 
kernel. :-)

Kernel/Coder/Carnival... I guess there's not a strong metaphor to this 
progression, but it's not too bad.  At least the order of progression 
in size is very clear.  Kernel implies something tiny like a seed, 
clearly smaller than Coder, which implies a single person doing work, 
which is clearly smaller than Carnival, which implies a festival of a 
lot of people.

So in summary, I'm okay with Kernel/Coder/Carnival.

A little over-analysis never hurt anyone,

- Doug Way