Re: Apologia for bzr

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

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On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 12:50 AM, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:

> Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 9:32 PM, Daniel Colascione <dancol@dancol.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >> On 01/06/2014 12:27 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> >>
> >>> Conceivably we could rename "window" to "pane" and "frame" to "window".
> >>> I think the two renamings would have to be done in two different
> releases,
> >>> perhaps a year or two apart.
> >>>
> >>
> >> I don't think we could pull off this renaming. At least on the lisp
> level,
> >> we would have to maintain compatibility aliases effectively forever,
> >> doubling the number of lisp symbols dealing with these concepts. One
> does
> >> not simply rename a function that's been in constant use for 20 years.
> >> Sure, you might argue, we could change the labels we assign these
> concepts
> >> in the UI and leave lisp alone, but the lisp symbols are too closely
> tied
> >> to the UI (with respect to keybindings and M-x) to change the two
> >> independently.
> >>
> >> The best thing we can do is explain in the tutorial and manual the
> >> correspondence between Emacs and common terms.
> >>
> >
> > We are talking about the user level. Interactive function names can be
> > duplicated.
>
> That's a bad idea since a fundamental part of the "interactive" user
> interface is completion, so if you are trying to find some
> functionality, getting two names in the set of completions that look
> like they might do different things because of using different terms,
> this will not help the user figuring out what to do.
>
>
There are trade offs, but it is bad logic to say it is a bad idea just
because of that of course.

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