From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: 05/15: gnu: wesnoth: Rename package to the-battle-for-wesnoth. Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2019 16:00:24 +0100 Message-ID: <87mulg2whj.fsf@elephly.net> References: <20190326131842.7363.84034@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org> <20190326131844.C73EC209E3@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org> <87imw4fuee.fsf@gnu.org> <87r2aso7zh.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:46494) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h9AHs-0000P1-KX for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:16:21 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h9AHr-0006Ok-G2 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:16:20 -0400 Received: from sender4-of-o53.zoho.com ([136.143.188.53]:21394) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h9AHr-0006L5-5I for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 27 Mar 2019 11:16:19 -0400 In-reply-to: List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: swedebugia Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Pierre wrote: >Finally, as I mentioned above with the completion systems that we have, >we've got nothing to lose in having long names. swedebugia wrote: > Good useability is important and cryptic acronyms are not something to > expose to the user if possible to avoid IMO. > Maybe this is where we need to discuss what our target audience is? > Nerds only? [=E2=80=A6] This is a false dichotomy, in my opinion. Good usability is not at odds with using short package names. I also think that the length of package names is not going to be a deciding factor for somebody who is not a =E2=80=9Cnerd=E2=80=9D, so let=E2=80=99s not go down this tangent please. = There are different interfaces to package managers, and we=E2=80=99re currently not offering fu= lly functional interfaces that would be more suitable for people without a =E2=80=9Ctechie=E2=80=9D background. If you want to make Guix more accessi= ble *that=E2=80=99s* a screw to turn, not the length of package names. Completion should not be used as an excuse to use long package names. For one, not everyone is using Bash, so not everyone benefits from our Bash completions. (Some shells can reuse Bash completions but this does not invalidate the point.) The package name is just an identifier for command line interaction purposes. There is no reason why it should be descriptive =E2=80=93 after = all, that=E2=80=99s what the package description is used for. Users can easily = find the package they are interested in by using the search feature. That will give them the short name by which they can refer to the package. Having that short name be long serves little purpose. In the past we agreed to certain naming rules and we put them into the contributors=E2=80=99 guide. If we want to change or relax those rules we = need to reach consensus, collectively. This cannot be a unilateral decision. -- Ricardo