< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_(terminology)>. For the Dutch, it is "Nederland", not "Nederlands" and the "the" is not part of the name, no more than in "the United States."
It appears that the definite article is not required and, when used, does not have to be considered part of the nomenclature. I.e., "the Apache OpenOffice project". I agree that "Apache ODF Toolkit" is difficult to refer to without saying "the". I wonder, as does Rob, whether this is simply a matter of habit. I don't have the tendency with "Apache Subversion" or any other Apache <one-word> projects that I can think of. Very curious. - Dennis PS: If there were a version number, the desired to prefix "the" goes away! Apache ODF Toolkit 0.90, for example. That's how it works for me. "Toolkit" seems to be the culprit. -----Original Message----- From: Rob Weir [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 08:48 To: [email protected] Subject: "Apache ODF Toolkit" versus "The Apache ODF Toolkit" Something that has been bothering me, a little inconsistency. The legacy project, pre-incubation, was with an organization called "The ODF Toolkit Union". We referred to the project as "The ODF Toolkit". Now that we're here, we add "Apache" to our name. But are we "The Apache ODF Toolkit" or just "Apache ODF Toolkit"? -- "I download Apache ODF Toolkit" versus "I downloaded the Apache ODF Toolkit" -- "Welcome to Apache ODF Toolkit project" versus "Welcome to the Apache ODF Toolkit project" and so on. I'm seeing both forms in use on our website and our communications. We should probably agree on one or the other. To me, the form without the "the" seems unnatural and awkward, but that might just be from my long exposure to the legacy name. Similarly, there is nothing intrinsically odd about referring to "Netherlands" rather then "the Netherlands" other than convention puts a "the" there. Does anyone have a preference, or a good argument for one form over the other. -Rob
