[darcs-devel] Re: darcs patch: overhaul the darcs.net front page.

[Mark Stosberg]

Thomas Counsell wrote:
> Hello
> 
> On 21 Aug 2006, at 05:33, Eric Y. Kow wrote:
>> Should we maybe tone down the "Smart" bit?
> 
>> Maybe something like "Flexible" 

"Flexible" when applied to software can mean "needs lots of configuration"

>> or "Simple"... Isn't that what we're
>> trying to get at?

"Simple" can mean "Has little functionality...intentionally!"

> Perhaps spontaneous? That is the key word used in the paragraph, and 
> certainly one of the aspects of darcs that I enjoy most.

"Spontaneous Branches" evokes "branches that spring into existence on 
their own". But just "Spontaneous" on its own sounds almost like 
"unpredictable".

I think a lot good words have been tainted by their prior use in 
marketing. Sometimes I see the word "Intelligent" to describe software,
but I prefer the more casual "Smart".

I didn't see the old "Hi..." phrasing as pretentious, I found it more 
personal and friendly.

I think it's going to be hard to please everyone with the marketing. If 
we are too introverted about it, we undersell ourselves and miss out on 
users.

<tangent>
I was surprised about some of the pro-subversion things I found on the 
wiki over the weekend on the darcs-vs-subversion page. (I've changed 
them now.) It wasn't that they were malicious or false, it was just that 
the same thing could be expressed as a positive for darcs instead of a 
positive for subversion.

For example, "Subversion is more similar to CVS". I think from the darcs 
perspective, this is actually an /advantage/ for darcs, but it was 
portrayed the other way around. It's a fine opinion to prefer to 
Subversion and see that is an advantage, but on our wiki, it's certainly
fair to present things from a perspective that promotes darcs!
</tangent>

On the other hand, if we too over-confident and pushy about our image, 
it can appear to be false or at least unappealing.

What I felt was missing from the front page was really getting a sense 
of darcs at a glance.  I thought "Distributed. Interactive. Smart." 
helped with that.

If you read further, we do back up this marketing with detail about all 
of these, including eventual links to papers and talks about the patch 
algebra, which look very "smart" to me, and it's not something I see 
happening with the other SCMs, so it seemed fair to me.

   Mark