Re: plz -> curl?

[Philip Kaludercic]

Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net> writes:

> 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.

[...]

> 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.

It might be useful to clarify this point, because it seems unintuitive
to me -- setting aside whether or not this package should be renamed.

When considering a desktop environment like GNOME, most applications are
presented using their generic names ("Text editor" instead of Gedit,
"PDF Viewer" instead of Evince).  This seems to make sense to me,
because most user is interested in the functionality not the
implementation.

When considering a library, this calculus might change a bit.  Yet it is
still nice for a user to have some idea of what dependencies a package
is pulling in.

I think it would be nice to have guidelines for new packages, also to
help contributors when coming up with a name, if anything just to bring
some consistency into the naming schemes.