[darcs-users] Re: argh. please change the name "unpull"

[Albert Reiner]

[Tommy Pettersson <ptp at lysator.liu.se>, Fri, 18 Mar 2005 00:50:39 +0100]:
> 'Annihilate' will have too long prefix in common with
> 'annotate' (which probably also could be better named),
> hmm... 'obliterate' won't.  :-)

Two points:

- Another problem with `annihilate' comes from a possible interference
  with the ``theory of patches'': for me, the term evokes the
  association of an annihilation operator; forgetting about
  normalization of the ket (which patch mechanics doesn't use), this
  sounds too much like the recording of an inverse patch that then
  gets commuted all the way to the original patch, where both combine
  to an identity patch.  Which is (almost) what unrecord does.

  Patch theory is too useful as a metaphor for the newbie to give up.

- If there is to be a name change (and I personally don't see the
  need, nor do I object to it), it should come as soon as possible:
  darcs seems to be gaining more and more new users (yours truely, a
  classical "early majority" user, being one of them), and new names
  for old tricks are a hurdle for the less adventurous population a
  1.something version attracts.

  (A lesson can be learned from the history of planned languages here:
  Ido wasn't worse than Esperanto, but it died mainly because it kept
  changing too much for the speakers to want to keep up with.)

Just my NOK 0.02,

Albert.