Re: App Naming Nazi (was: Re: Gstreamer)

[Raffael Herzog]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004 12:37:11 -0800 (PST), Alex Perez 
<aperez@student.santarosa.edu> wrote:

> > - GPlayer.app: What MoviePlayer.app was before.
>
> I loved everything you said to this point in your email, so don't let 
> this
> negative comment overshadow the fact that I think the project is great,
> but I do not think we need any more ridiculous GWhatever names. Why 
> append
> G? Why is that necessary? *MANY* here consider that extremely bad style,
> and I am in that group. Does the G buy you anything? Does it tell you 
> what
> the app does? Then why put it there in the first place? Why presume
> nonportability?

Originally, I didn't want to say anything on this, but now, that this 
useless subthread is so suprisingly alive, let me tell you all the story 
of the name "GPlayer.app":

"MoviePlayer.app" isn't optimal because it plays more than just movies, 
you can also play OGG Vorbis or MP3 streams and, if you like, you can even 
do some CPU hogging by visualising audio-only streams.

Then I had this great idea: "If it plays any media streams, why not simply 
call it 'MediaPlayer.app' instead of 'MoviePlayer.app'?" But then again, 
this picture appeared before my minds eye: Me standing in front of an army 
of lawyers, from a far distance I could hear the sound of a hammer being 
slammed on a big desk, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer grinning at me 
gloatingly, and myself only being capable of one thought: "How the heck am 
I supposed to ever be able to pay those billions of dollars I've just been 
condemned to?" - And all this just because I wanted to call my open source 
media playing application such that the name reflects what the app does: 
Playing media. Nah, that's not it.

Then I finally came back to my senses and stopped thinking about a name 
for something that currently is nothing more than a proof-of-concept and a 
bunch of ideas, so I simply wrote "GPlayer.app" and pressed the send 
button.

cu,
   Raffi

--
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no 
difference, but in practice, there is.

Raffael Herzog - herzog@raffael.ch - www.raffael.ch - ICQ #67961355