>>>>> "f" == florin  <florin at iucha.net> writes:

    f> On Thu, Jan 31, 2002 at 09:01:27AM -0600, Dan Churchill wrote:
    >> Of course it's silly - otherwise why would it be more fun to ask in
    f> public.
    >> However, there was a serious point to Ben's original message with
    f> which I
    >> agree:
    >> "So perhaps part of the future of desktop Linux will be for
    >> applications to start calling themselves by names (and
    >> icons) that are intuitive instead of inside jokes."
    >> One of the most difficult aspects that newcomers to Linux experience,
    f> I
    >> think, is figuring out what program they need to do what, and the
    f> naming
    >> conventions, while colorful and all that, don't help matters.
    >> 
    >> So maybe what we need is an *up-to-date* list of open source software,
    f> what
    >> it's named, and what it does.

    f> http://freshmeat.net?

    >> Any time I've ever needed a Linux
    f> program to
    >> do something new, it's always a big Internet research project to
    f> figure out
    >> what the available apps are, even though they were probably already
    >> installed with my everything-including-the-kitchen-sink RedHat
    f> installation,
    >> and *that* is what is truly silly.

    f> It might be silly but "There must be only one!"

    f> 1. You just can't have two programs with the same name! I don't want to
    f> start an "Internet Explorer"-named-project and neither Microsoft.

    f> 2. The language evolves and new words appear. Imagine having to use
    f> _only_ ancient words in today's world just for the sake of "convenience"
    f> to newbies/dumb/etc... My command of [Ancient|Common] English is not
    f> good
    f> enough to generate such examples (maybe radio...) but imagine the
    f> sillyness of that. If everybody wears "shoes", soon people will need to
    f> differentiate them "Shoes from Arthur" sucks but "Shoes from Ian" are
    f> great.

Well, that's why we don't make new words for everything.  For example,
I can still say "word processor."  I don't make up a new word for it.
I use a phrase that is more descriptive.  

Note that I'm not saying that we don't need unique names for the
programs.  What I DO say is that we need to bridge the gap FOR
NEWCOMERS from our unique names, that are not very natural and that
may have been chosen for uniqueness rather than understandability, to
phrases that are meaningful.  

The names of the programs are like those acronyms that people use in
large organizations, that are cryptic to newcomers.  They're not
useless, but you need to have some way to bring a newcomer into that
organization and make them productive.

R