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Re: [NonGNU ELPA] New package: sweep


From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: [NonGNU ELPA] New package: sweep
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2022 22:36:06 -0400

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  > > May I suggest using a name which is more descriptive than "Sweep"?
  > > A person who doesn't already know that it has to do with SWI-Prolog
  > > would never guess that.

  > Isn't "sweep" pronounced [swi:p]?

Yes, but that sound would never have led me to think of "SWI" or "Prolog"
if I had not already been informed.

We call Emacs the "self-documenting" text editor.  But packages are
not effectively self-documenting if their names don't give you at
least a glimmer of an idea of whether they are worth your finding out
more about.

Calling this package "SWEEP", pure and simple, would be a form of
"inside joke".  If you use a "SWEEP" package with SWI-Prolog, you
would see the relationship of names, and might find it amusing.  For
everyone else, it would be a confusing disguise for the package.

The change we seem to have decided will make this SWI Prolog package
somewhat discoverable.  But we have many other package names that are
unhelpful, such as eww, or so clever that they mislead, such as
company.

It's fine for a package name to be clever, but the first priority in
choosing the name should be to make the package discoverable.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)





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