Re: Renaming eglot -- or at least add an alias?

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

João Távora <joaotavora@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 12:34 PM Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>
> wrote:
>
>>  The idea behind the name (Emacs polyGLOT) is not intuitive.
>
> Since when are names "intuitive"?  Do I have any intuition about who
> you are or what you do from your name alone?  Names are abstract
> indirections by definition (with some 20th century structuralist and
> post-structuralist caveats that I really don't think apply here).

Intuitive in the sense that you can reasonably infer information given
previous experiences.  I know that [languagename]-mode is usually a
major mode for a language.  A package name like "hl-diff" gives a rough
idea of what the package is about, when you know that "hl" stands for
highlight.  Something like "highlight-parentheses" is obvious.  If you
know about VC, then "vc-fossil" is an intuitive name.

In my opinion, non-intuitive names are among other things: bbdb, cape,
cider, delight, ement, helm, rich-minority, tiny, ... (this is just a
random selection from skimming through the package list)

> I have no problem admitting "Emacs polyglot" is mostly a half-assed pretext
> to justify a distinctive, easy to type name. I wouldn't fixate on it.
>
> Some people like its sound and uniqueness.  A demographic you are not part
> of, I comprehend that. You can't always please everyone.

I get that.

>> I don't even think it is necessary to rename the implementation as long
>> as at least one auto-loaded alias is available.
>
> What is this idea? Say you make M-x philip an auto-loaded alias for M-x
> eglot.

Where "M-x philip" is a stand-in for some of the suggestions I made
before like "M-x ide-mode"?

> Say I go with that, then what?  What about M-x eglot-rename, M-x
> eglot-reconnect,
> M-x eglot-shutdown and all the eglot- user variables, etc?
> They keep the same names? What good is that really?  Alias all of them?
> No thanks, there are enough confused users already: I want to communicate
> with them as unequivocally as possible

Honestly, I think that commands like eglot-rename should either be
aliased or wrapped by some other prefix-less command
(e.g. "rename-symbol").  User options are more tricky, that is true.

A more radical idea, but that might be something for Emacs 30+ could be
to just enable Elgot by default when everything necessary for using it
is available.  Then new users wouldn't have to bother with finding out
what the right packages, user options, etc. are and could just use it
OOTB.  That would be assuming that anyone with an LSP server installed
is actually interested in using it.

> João