[plt-dev] Re: renaming programs in the distribution

I agree with Sam and Carl but have a slightly different rationale. It
seems to me to be about advertising. Tools that any competent
development kit should have (compilation, decompilatuon, distribution
management, docs) can all be safely lumped together in the "look here
for the standard tools" command (rico for us). Slideshow, scribble,
and the webserver are not as standard and we want to make them more
prominent so they get their own name at the top.

Robby

On Monday, April 19, 2010, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> At Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:45:27 -0400, Carl Eastlund wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
>> > Similar to the way that `rico docs' serves the role of `plt-help', we
>> > could have `rico games' replace `plt-games'.
>> >
>> > For GUI launchers for docs and games under Windows and Mac OS X, I
>> > suggest `Rico Docs' and `Rico Games'. It's ok to have spaces in GUI-app
>> > names, and then the documentation can refer to `rico docs' and `rico
>> > games' commands (i.e., they work whether someone tries to use them via
>> > a command line or by clicking on a GUI app).
>>
>> I thought "rico" was just our administrative script name.
>
> Yes, it depends on what `rico' is for.
>
>
> My own views on some naming issues have evolved:
>
>  * I was originally in favor of "PLT Racket" as the system name, but
>    I've come around to the view that it should be "Racket" to
>    streamline our marketing.
>
>  * I originally thought that we needed a tool to unify just `mzc',
>    `setup-plt', and `planet', but I eventually came to think of the
>    unification as for command-line tools more generally.
>
> These impressions make me think that command-line tools that are
> currently invoked through `plt-' names should turn into `rico'
> commands. I don't think that "Rico Web Server" is the name of the
> websever, but it makes sense to me that the Racket Web Server is
> started from the command-line using the general Racket command-line
> tool, hence `rico web-server'.
>
> Why not `rico scribble' and `rico slideshow' instead of `scribble' and
> `slideshow'? Indeed, now that I've thought about it more, I think that
> Scribble and Slideshow should be `rico' tools, too. Typing `rico scrib'
> is not much harder than typing `scribble', and ditto for `rico slide'
> versus `slideshow'.
>
>
> Granted, using `rico' for the command-line tool instead of the name
> `racket' is a little awkward, but that's yet another set of issues to
> balance. The name `racket' seems long to me as a prefix, compared to
> `rico', but it's not much longer. And maybe the executable currently
> called `racket' (and we really have to have that standalone executable
> for starting scripts, etc.) should be `racketrun' or something after
> all, even though that doesn't fit with the `java' and `perl' and
> `python and `ruby' precedents.
>
>
> Or maybe the the problem is trying to put all command-line tools as
> commands within something like `rico'. Maybe `rico' really should be
> for *programming* tools... but what do we produce other than
> programming tools? Which tools belong in `rico', and what name do you
> use for the others when just dropping "PLT" would be too generic?
>
>