On 2019-03-27 16:00, Ricardo Wurmus wrote: > > Pierre wrote: >> Finally, as I mentioned above with the completion systems that we have, >> we've got nothing to lose in having long names.
Reading the arguments of Ricardo I changed my mind and support keeping the variable names short. > > swedebugia wrote: >> Good useability is important and cryptic acronyms are not something to >> expose to the user if possible to avoid IMO. > >> Maybe this is where we need to discuss what our target audience is? >> Nerds only? […] > > This is a false dichotomy, in my opinion. Good usability is not at odds > with using short package names. I also think that the length of package > names is not going to be a deciding factor for somebody who is not a > “nerd”, so let’s not go down this tangent please. There are different > interfaces to package managers, and we’re currently not offering fully > functional interfaces that would be more suitable for people without a > “techie” background. If you want to make Guix more accessible *that’s* > a screw to turn, not the length of package names. Thanks for sharing this. I regret having written this as a dichotomy. I'm actually very happy with guix overall and the guix-web frontend is awesome. :) I'm sorry if I added tension to this discussion. I will try expressing myself less confrontationally going forward. > > Completion should not be used as an excuse to use long package names. > For one, not everyone is using Bash, so not everyone benefits from our > Bash completions. (Some shells can reuse Bash completions but this does > not invalidate the point.) I agree. > > The package name is just an identifier for command line interaction > purposes. There is no reason why it should be descriptive – after all, > that’s what the package description is used for. Users can easily find > the package they are interested in by using the search feature. That > will give them the short name by which they can refer to the package. > Having that short name be long serves little purpose. I agree. Would you agree that we try to strike a compromise with short package variable names, synopsis' and longer descriptions? Should we state this clearly in the documentation for packagers? I guess a GUI-search would work like guix-web and search all three for hits and displaying the results. -- Cheers Swedebugia
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