Re: plz -> curl?

[Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net>]

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On Mon, May 16, 2022, 19:50 Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > We have arrived at a deep and fundamental disagreement about what it
> > means to make a program clear.  I have pointed out that the name "plz"
> > gives no information about what the package does.  It is totally
> > unhelpful.
> >
> > You contend that an arbitrary and unhelpful name is just as good as a
> > helpful name.


No, that is not my contention at all. I tried to explain my position as
clearly as I could in my last messages.

The argument is that we have commands to do searches
> > from the name to its purpose and from words in its purpose to the
> > name.
> >
> > Those commands are helpful, but using them is laborious by comparison
> > woth the simple verbalconnection.
> >
> > For the packages feature, I am a beginner.  I don't know those
> > commands.  I will learn these commands if I start using packages more,
> > but there will always be many users who are beginners in this.
>

Users who don't know how to use the package system will not be installing
the package in the first place.

>
> > Whenever we add a new package, we should consider whether to change
> > its name first.  But plz has not been installed for long.  Giving it a
> > clear, meaningful name now won't cause any pain.
>
> I agree completely.  There are many unhelpful package names, such as
> "corfu", "cape", "eglot", "marginalia" and "mcd".  At least eglot could
> be renamed "lsp-client", which tells the user exactly what it does.
>

Those packages have distinctive identities to those who use them. Giving
them generic names does not help the user remember them; it has the
opposite effect.

>
> > A clear meaningful name does not have to be long.  Someone suggested
> > `curl' -- meaningful, and quite short.


As I said, I don't want to use that name, because it implies more
comprehensive support for curl than I intend to provide in the library.  As
well, there are other packages that provide a front end to curl.

Perhaps `curl-url' would be
> > even more helpful, to the many who who don't use curl -- and it is
> > still short.
>

Thanks, but no.

> If no one has a better idea, let's rename it that way now.
>
> curl is already taken.  `curl-url' would work, but so would
> `curl-http-client', which I think is relatively more meaningful.
>

As I've said, long, purely descriptive package names like that are less
useful in the long run, as well as simply being too long.

At this time, I don't intend to rename the library.  Were it to be proposed
for merging into core someday, that would be different--but as has been
said, that won't be the case anytime soon, if ever.

>

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