Hi!

Samir Saidani <saidani at info.unicaen.fr> wrote:
> I agree with you, but I think we don't need to ask for an agreement :
> just replace your initials sd by 'StephaneDucasse'. Then you can use

Mmm, and if everyone start changing their initials we need to deal with
the fact that there is already lots of code out there with the old
initials too. *That* is the main reason for me *not* changing this
convention when I wrote SM2 in the first place - I just migrated all
existing initials that were written down on the Swiki page.

Now, as Cees said, if we want to do something different, we should think
it through a bit, that's all I am saying.

> the "ENH - Giving Information" browser addon to have further
> information... as email, web, name, and so one... There could be a
> problem when two people has the same name/initials, as
> 'DavidSmith'. So we should enhance the way we tackle this story of
> initials/name.
> 
> Some people wants initials and other wants something more explicit. I
> think that the economic way is to choose by default something like
> 'DavidSmith' which is more explicit than 'ds' : 'StephaneDucasse'
> encodes more information than 'sd', and we don't need to make a
> connection to SqueakMap to know the name : so it is economic. 

There is no "connection to SqueakMap". You have the SqueakMap instance
inside your image - the lookup is just a Dictionary lookup, no network
involved.
 
Note - I don't care what String you enter as "developer initials" - feel
free to enter "StephaneDucasse". But please let us use SM to make sure
we have a register and that they are unique. Please recall what SM is
about - a map of all things Squeak, not just packages. I thought this
was pretty clear.

Stephane wrote:
> When I have a file on my disc and working at home without network  
> connexion
> (Yes when you see me replying to emails late this is that I'm still  
> in my office), then
> I do not have SM present.

I would guess you *do* have SM present. In your image. There is no
network involved here.

So let me recap what I think:

1. We need unique ids of some kind. The developer initials has served
this purpose until now, and sure, it is not perfectly readable - but it
is what we have and we need to think a bit IMHO.

2. If we want to have a more readable field then we seriously need to
consider the fact that just renaming our ids to something else will
cause "information loss". If I rename myself to "GoranKrampe", then all
code with "gk" will be hard to map to me.

3. Adjust the tools so that we stuff not only the initials but also the
full name into changesets and MCs. Then we have both and all are happy.

And of course, I am not sure how serious problem we have - but it seems
less smart if people start renaming their dev initials so that we lose
the ability to track all old code...

regards, Göran