Frank Heckenbach wrote:
Waldek Hebisch wrote:
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
Prof A Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) wrote:
or "cgp"?
Hmm, doesn't seem to be taken, at least in Debian ...
Perhaps we could use this then?
Objections, anyone?
Matthias, would it be ok for Debian?
I do not understand why you press for very short name. Such name is typically meanigless (for me "cgp" is meanigless),
Compile (with) GNU Pascal.
You can "rationalize" anything (for example AMA -> Another Meanigless Acronym). However, regular naming for Gnu programs puts `g' at the begining. But we do not want `gcp' (= Gnu `cp'). The point is that we loose much of psychological proxymity to gpc (in alphabetical listings `cgp' and `gpc' will show separate). Of course it is better then: aap - Absolutely Automatic Pascal apa - Awesome Pascal Automaker bpb - Beautiful Pascal Builder
but IMHO not much.
and as I wrote hard to search for. I would say that a person who do not want to type three additional characters in program name is likely to drop Pascal for a language where `begin' is repleced by a single character.
After many "complaints" I've seen so far over the years, I think it's *very* important for new potential users that the first steps are as easy as possible. Even a longer name might be deterring. (Maybe sad, but true.)
I think that shorthening name is misguided. Such users will complain about command line anyway. Give them IDE -- that will make a difference (note that IDE hides compiler/make name).
For me `gpmake' sounds almost perfect. I have a checked various languages and most do not try to use very short names. In fact I have a bunch of `xmake' programs which either generate makefiles or work as make replacement for a given language.
As I said, I don't think "make" is a good thing to think of for a *normal* Pascal programmer. We're, of course, deep in the internals, but a normal programm doesn't want to (and shouldn't have to) think about when a compiler recreates which files. It should just produce a correct executable.
I claim that `make' has quite good "name recognition". Even if they do not know what `make' is actually doing, they do know it a way to compile programs. IIRC BP IDE had `Make' and `Build' position in the menu, so the name should be known for a lot of folks.