CapitalWords
Neal Whitman
New thread! New thread! What is the grammatical name for the
more and more common quasi-compound word, in which two words are
printed with no space in between them, but keeping capital letters
at the beginning of each word? These are always brand names of some
kind, as the initial capital would imply, and often are used by new
banks. Examples are: TeamBank, and ... well, that's the only one
I can remember right now. IMHO these are sloppy, indecisive usages,
but I believe that somewhere out there someone has put a name to it,
as it was a trivia question in a game my brother was playing.
-verbum
Jonathan M Lennox
The term I've always heard is InterCaps (which has the advantage,
when written, of being self-descriptive). Not only do you see it in
brand names, but also in certain programming styles...Mathematica and
Macintosh Toolbox both have these all over.
Jonathan Lennox
jm...@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu
Gabe M Wiener
>
> The term I've always heard is InterCaps (which has the advantage,
>when written, of being self-descriptive). Not only do you see it in
>brand names, but also in certain programming styles...Mathematica and
>Macintosh Toolbox both have these all over.
The Macintosh has championed the use of the InterCap. You can put a disk
into your SuperDrive and run MacWrite or MicroSoft Word. You can insert
graphics into your MacWrite documents...graphics you have designed with
MacDraw, MacPaint, or SuperPaint. You can then lay your documents out
with DeskTop Publishing software like PageMaker or FrameMaker. If you
don't have any of these programs, you can order them from MacWarehouse or
MacConnection, both of whom will gladly FedEx your order to you overnight.
--
Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings
gm...@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu to be seriously considered as a means of
N2GPZ in ham radio circles communication. The device is inherently of
72355,1226 on CI$ no value to us." -Western Union memo, 1877
Victor Eijkhout
|>
|> New thread! New thread! What is the grammatical name for the
|> more and more common quasi-compound word, in which two words are
|> printed with no space in between them, but keeping capital letters
|> at the beginning of each word?
According to The New Hackers Dictionary (which is why I'm crossposting
this) this is called BiCapitalization. According to TNHD ``Too many
marketroid types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it.'' I've been accused when using BiCaps of being a
MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise :-)
Victor.
dks=
>In article <1992Feb18.2...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> jm...@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Jonathan M Lennox) writes:
>>
>> The term I've always heard is InterCaps (which has the advantage,
>>when written, of being self-descriptive). Not only do you see it in
>>brand names, but also in certain programming styles...Mathematica and
>>Macintosh Toolbox both have these all over.
>
>The Macintosh has championed the use of the InterCap. You can put a disk
>into your SuperDrive and run MacWrite or MicroSoft Word. You can insert
>graphics into your MacWrite documents...graphics you have designed with
>MacDraw, MacPaint, or SuperPaint. You can then lay your documents out
>with DeskTop Publishing software like PageMaker or FrameMaker. If you
>don't have any of these programs, you can order them from MacWarehouse or
>MacConnection, both of whom will gladly FedEx your order to you overnight.
Microsoft.
Then again, there are those who insist on calling the thing a MacIntosh.
Cheers.
--
Dhanesh
<d...@mit.edu>
--
Toby Koosman
> New thread! New thread! What is the grammatical name for the
>more and more common quasi-compound word, in which two words are
>printed with no space in between them, but keeping capital letters
>at the beginning of each word?
Toby Koosman
University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee USA
Internet: koo...@utkvx1.utcc.utk.edu Bitnet: koo...@utkvx.utk.edu
Sherwood Daniel Silliman
>In article <1992Feb18.2...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> gm...@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
>>In article <1992Feb18.2...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> jm...@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Jonathan M Lennox) writes:
>>>
>>> The term I've always heard is InterCaps (which has the advantage,
>
>
>Then again, there are those who insist on calling the thing a MacIntosh.
>
Or a McIntosh, were it spelled like the fruit.
>
>Cheers.
>--
>Dhanesh
> <d...@mit.edu>
>
>--
--
Sherwood D. Silliman "When I give food to the poor, they call me a
saint. When I ask why the poor have no food,
they call me a communist." --Dom Helder Camara
Jim Scobbie
In <1992Feb18.2...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> gm...@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
>The Macintosh has championed the use of the InterCap. You can put a disk
>into your SuperDrive and run MacWrite or MicroSoft Word. You can insert
>graphics into your MacWrite documents...graphics you have designed with
>MacDraw, MacPaint, or SuperPaint. You can then lay your documents out
>with DeskTop Publishing software like PageMaker or FrameMaker. If you
>don't have any of these programs, you can order them from MacWarehouse or
>MacConnection, both of whom will gladly FedEx your order to you overnight.
For Macintosh, I was just about to say, I can understand these InterCaps
since 'Mac' (and 'Mc') in names is frequently followed by upper case:
MacKinnon (as in James M. Scobbie) :-) So MacPaint is like McNicol and
MacWrite like McPherson or McQuorquodale.
But unfortunately the original product is Macintosh, not MacIntosh.
I never eat in McDonalds, so I don't know if it is Mcdonalds, or whether
their 'chicken' is McChicken or Mcchicken. Perhaps someone can enlighten
me there too, though not by reposting this query to alt.fan.BigMac. Hmm,
shouldn't that be big mc? Oh well, this idea is fading fast.
*Perhaps* the recognition of 'Mac' as a separable morph which is followed
by uppercase could well have contributed to the phenomenon of InterCap
slogans (a certain Gaelic etymology for *that* word!). Any takers?
--
James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150
sco...@csli.stanford.edu
Paul Wallich
Zillions of people will no doubt correct me :-) but I have a sneaking
suspicion the convention comes from InterLisp in the pre-mac days.
Some lisps made bicapping (think of it like kneecapping) necessary
because they defaulted to thinking of all the common separators
(._-) as word terminators so that get-other-pointer had to be
typed get\-other\-pointer etc. Of course if you fixed this default
various things in the kernel broke.
paul
Bill Hopkins
writes [about WordsWithCapitalLettersEmbedded]:
>
>Zillions of people will no doubt correct me :-) but I have a sneaking
>suspicion the convention comes from InterLisp in the pre-mac days.
>Some lisps made bicapping (think of it like kneecapping) necessary
>because they defaulted to thinking of all the common separators
>(._-) as word terminators so that get-other-pointer had to be
>typed get\-other\-pointer etc. Of course if you fixed this default
>various things in the kernel broke.
I suspect that marketeers probably invented the abomination without
any help from the technical community. The search for protectable
trademarks is never-ending, and putting a capital letter in the
middle of a wOrd is (at least for now) one way of making it distinct
from common usage.
That said, another early instance. The phenomenon was also common
in the Burroughs implementation of Algol 60, along about the same
time. It allowed only letters and numbers in identifiers but
supported lower and upper case and long identifiers. Identifiers
like LastArrayIndex and LateForDinner were common.
Bill (IDidItToo) Hopkins
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Hopkins Paramax Systems Corporation (A Unisys Company)
215-648-2854 Great Valley Labs, PO Box 517, Paoli, PA 19301
hop...@GVL.Unisys.Com Opening my mouth is not company policy.
Peter Moylan
koo...@utkvx2.utk.edu (Toby Koosman) writes:
> In article <66...@ut-emx.uucp>, ver...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Neal Whitman)
> writes...
>> New thread! New thread! What is the grammatical name for the
>>more and more common quasi-compound word, in which two words are
>>printed with no space in between them, but keeping capital letters
>>at the beginning of each word?
> How about "stupid orthographic gimmick?"
Nobody so far has mentioned the one *good* reason for doing it.
I, and many other computer programmers, invent names like NextLine
and RunningAverage and so on to get around the rule in most
programming languages that you can't put a space in the middle of
a variable name. (Some people use underscores like_this for the
same purpose, but more and more of us are giving that up on the
grounds that it's ugly.)
So much for programming languages, but why is it creeping out into
mainstream English? The reason, I believe, is that many people
feel a compulsion to use programming terms and conventions when
describing anything even remotely connected with a computer. It
gives them an air (often false) of knowing What Is Really Going On.
That's why, for example, a lot of people still insist on writing
FORTRAN in upper case and putting a stroke through the O; it
makes their writing look as if it was done on a card punch.
--
Peter Moylan ee...@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
You read this of your own free will. I'm not responsible for
consequential damages.
Rich Wingerter
|> In <1992Feb18.2...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> gm...@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) writes:
|>
|> >The Macintosh has championed the use of the InterCap. You can put a disk
|> >into your SuperDrive and run MacWrite or MicroSoft Word. You can insert
|> >graphics into your MacWrite documents...graphics you have designed with
|> >MacDraw, MacPaint, or SuperPaint. You can then lay your documents out
|> >with DeskTop Publishing software like PageMaker or FrameMaker. If you
|> >don't have any of these programs, you can order them from MacWarehouse or
|> >MacConnection, both of whom will gladly FedEx your order to you overnight.
|> *Perhaps* the recognition of 'Mac' as a separable morph which is followed
|> by uppercase could well have contributed to the phenomenon of InterCap
|> slogans (a certain Gaelic etymology for *that* word!). Any takers?
I think another big factor is the marketing departments in these companies.
I'm sure they love InterCaps for two reasons. First, it makes their
CorpProduct a coined word, making it easier to defend as a tradename, and,
second, the shape of InterCap words is more easily recognizable, leading to
increased sales. It's well know in graphic design circles that mixed upper and
lower case letters are more recognizable, because the shapes of words are more
unique. And face it, most people make their buying decisions in split seconds.
They're either walking down the isle at CompUSA or ComputerWare, or they're in
their car, cruising for a MacDonald's.
--Rich Wingerter
Ken Tough
If you ask me, it sure beats using underscores when creating
multi_word_variable_names. Typing underscores is a major-league
drag, man (and/or woman).
--
Automatic Disclaimer:
The views expressed above are those of the author alone and may not
represent the views of the IBM PC User Group.
Tom Christiansen
:>According to The New Hackers Dictionary (which is why I'm crossposting
:>this) this is called BiCapitalization. According to TNHD ``Too many
:>marketroid types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it.'' I've been accused when using BiCaps of being a
:>MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise :-)
:>
:
: If you ask me, it sure beats using underscores when creating
: multi_word_variable_names. Typing underscores is a major-league
: drag, man (and/or woman).
Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
XtDisplayStringConversionWarning
XrmAllocMoreQuarkToStringTable
UninstallRootColormapQScanner
XawTextPopdownSearchAction
SecModeChangePermitted
NocacheMmapPrivatePrev
DaHitachiDK81510Sizes
Or this one?
Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
Xt_display_string_conversion_warning
Xrm_alloc_more_quark_to_string_table
uninstall_root_colormap_Qscanner
Xaw_text_popdown_search_action
sec_mode_change_permitted
nocache_mmap_private_prev
da_Hitachi_DK815_10_sizes
The answer for me is clearly the latter. My brain doesn't parse out words
by looking for case changes. Notice in particular how in the last example
significant information has ben lost by munging case information and spaces.
The complaint that underbars are difficult to type is lame. Either learn
to type better, or remap the key so it's in a more convenient place, or
use an editor that allows identifier completion.
--tom
D John McKenna
>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>Or this one?
> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice? The argument
about learning to type better is really lame - the _ is in a rather
inconvinient position. I know of no one who likes typing it.
John West
--
gu...@uniwa.uwa.edu.au For the humour impaired: insert a :-) every 3 words
Tom Christiansen
:tch...@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
:
:>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
:
:> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
:
:>Or this one?
:
:> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
:
:Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice? The argument
:about learning to type better is really lame - the _ is in a rather
:inconvinient position. I know of no one who likes typing it.
What's more important, being able to read code or type it?
An underbar is no harder to type than a paranthesis. Shall
we not use parens cause they're hard to type? Rubbish.
If you are typing that long a variable name repeatedly, get
a decent editor and let it help you.
--tom
Ross Alford
>In article <1992Feb19.1...@panix.com> p...@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
>writes [about WordsWithCapitalLettersEmbedded]:
>>
>>Zillions of people will no doubt correct me :-) but I have a sneaking
>>suspicion the convention comes from InterLisp in the pre-mac days.
>>...
>I suspect that marketeers probably invented the abomination without
>any help from the technical community. The search for protectable
>trademarks is never-ending, and putting a capital letter in the
>middle of a wOrd is (at least for now) one way of making it distinct
>from common usage.
>That said, another early instance. The phenomenon was also common
>in the Burroughs implementation of Algol 60, along about the same
>time. It allowed only letters and numbers in identifiers but
>supported lower and upper case and long identifiers. Identifiers
>like LastArrayIndex and LateForDinner were common.
I suspect that Wirth (of Pascal, etc. fame) may also have to shoulder a lot of
the blame. His Pascal style encourages this, and of course there's Modula-2,
which actually enforces it, using things like WriteString for the names of
library functions (and because M-2 is case-sensitive, you actually *have* to
write it that way--my Modula-2 programming career lasted about 4 hours because
of this extremely annoying convention, having to remember not just the
spelling and parameterization of each function call, but whatever quirky
capitalization it had, as well). I'm not suggesting that the practice
originated with Pascal or M-2, as they appeared later than the languages
above. Just that they probably helped the spread of this blight.
Ross
--
Ross A. Alford
Department of Zoology Internet: zl...@marlin.jcu.edu.au
James Cook University Phone: +61 77 81 4732
Townsville, Qld 4811 Australia
D John McKenna
>I suspect that Wirth (of Pascal, etc. fame) may also have to shoulder a lot of
>the blame. His Pascal style encourages this, and of course there's Modula-2,
>which actually enforces it, using things like WriteString for the names of
>library functions (and because M-2 is case-sensitive, you actually *have* to
>write it that way--my Modula-2 programming career lasted about 4 hours because
>of this extremely annoying convention,
Mine lasted a little longer - I mananged to persuade the compiler to
ignore case (well... not the compiler itself. It was more a matter of
writing a script to search ignoring case for all the keywords, and substitute
whatever monstosity M2 wanted).
Steve Lamont
>From the keyboard of gu...@uniwa.uwa.oz.au (D John McKenna):
>:tch...@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>:>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>:> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>:>Or this one?
>:> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
>What's more important, being able to read code or type it?
Typing it, of course. All code is write only to anyone but the author
anyhow. And after 6 months, even the author is probably totally lost.
Seriously, LongVariableNames suck_pond_scum_anyhow.
Bring back FORTRAN IV!!! :-) If you can't say it in six characters,
it ain't worth saying.
spl (the p stands for
PRMGXL = WRGIX1 + TEMP2)
--
Steve Lamont, SciViGuy -- (619) 534-7968 -- s...@dim.ucsd.edu
UCSD Microscopy and Imaging Resource/UCSD Med School/La Jolla, CA 92093-0608
"A woman in the shape of a monster/a monster in the shape of a woman/
the skies are full of them" - Adrienne Rich, "Planetarium"
Magnus Olsson
>tch...@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>
>>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>
>> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>
>>Or this one?
>
>> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
>
>Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice?
None of them.
IMAO, the use of long, BiCapitalized identifiers is a hiorrible
disease that has started spreading from the school of more "suitish"
programmers who use Modula 2 and treat every word by N. Wirth as
gospel :-).
But, honestly, if you really *need* thirty-character identifiers, then
you're using the wrong language. For example, if the Macintosh system
interface had been in a real object oriented language instead of
Pascal, those horrible, monstrous identifiers wouldn'thave been
necessary...
Magnus Olsson | \e+ /_
Dept. of Theoretical Physics | \ Z / q
University of Lund, Sweden | >----<
Internet: mag...@thep.lu.se | / \===== g
Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 | /e- \q
Matthias Ulrich Neeracher
>In article <1992Feb21....@uniwa.uwa.oz.au> gu...@uniwa.uwa.oz.au (D John McKenna) writes:
>>tch...@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>>
>>>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>>
>>> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>>
>>>Or this one?
>>
>>> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
>>
>>Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice?
>
>None of them.
>
>IMAO, the use of long, BiCapitalized identifiers is a hiorrible
>disease that has started spreading from the school of more "suitish"
>programmers who use Modula 2 and treat every word by N. Wirth as
>gospel :-).
Surely you're joking, Mr. Olsson :-)
I don't think _Algorithms and Data Structures_ by Wirth contains a single variable that
is longer than 2 characters (of which the 2nd usually is a digit).
Matthias
-----
Matthias Neeracher ne...@iis.ethz.ch
"There once was an Age of Reason, but we've progressed beyond it."
-- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_
Karl Kleine
|> [...]
|> Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
|>
|> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
|>
|> Or this one?
|>
|> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
|> [...]
Once upon a time, there was a language called Algol60. It had a wonderful
feature: You could have spaces and the like in your identifier! Also no
length restriction like FORTRAN, and this now 30 years ago! The identifiers
could of course be written with both lower and upper case characters.
So, what about the identifier:
I prefer the Algol60 style
Same for Algol68, by the way.
But the most funny thing is the possibility to have multi part procedure
names in Algol60, where the parts are separated by argument sub lists!
PROCEDURE add vectors (a, b) giving :(c)
You guess it right: The identifier of the procedure is 'add vectors giving',
and you may call it also as 'addvectorsgiving (x,y,z)'!
I don't care much about that funny procedure identifier business, but i do
miss the style to write identifiers like in the 'good ol' Algol6X days'
--
Karl Kleine email kle...@fzi.de
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik phone +49-721-9654-950
Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14, D-7500 Karlsruhe, Germany fax +49-721-9654-959
Noah Friedman
>>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>>Or this one?
>> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
>Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice? The argument
>about learning to type better is really lame - the _ is in a rather
>inconvinient position. I know of no one who likes typing it.
I don't mind typing the underscores. It's no harder than capitalizing
characters, and it is *infinitely* easier to read.
I don't think they've ever bothered me, though I admit I prefer `-' as a
separator (in lisp and scheme, for example). Can't use that one in your C
programs, though.
Matthew Farwell
>>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>>Or this one?
>> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
>Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice? The argument
>about learning to type better is really lame - the _ is in a rather
>inconvinient position. I know of no one who likes typing it.
I personally would type Mac^K, and it would do it for me. All but the
first time, of course.
Dylan.
--
If you can waggle it and he can feel it, you have a signalling system.
Dik T. Winter
> But the most funny thing is the possibility to have multi part procedure
> names in Algol60, where the parts are separated by argument sub lists!
>
> PROCEDURE add vectors (a, b) giving :(c)
>
> You guess it right: The identifier of the procedure is 'add vectors giving',
> and you may call it also as 'addvectorsgiving (x,y,z)'!
>
We called the sequence ') <sequence of letters and digits> : (' a fat comma;
which it was in fact.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland
d...@cwi.nl
ron house
>But the most funny thing is the possibility to have multi part procedure
>names in Algol60, where the parts are separated by argument sub lists!
> PROCEDURE add vectors (a, b) giving :(c)
>You guess it right: The identifier of the procedure is 'add vectors giving',
>and you may call it also as 'addvectorsgiving (x,y,z)'!
Sorry to spoil your day, but in Algol-60 the 'giving:' is just a fancy
comment. In fact, )comment:( goes by the name of 'fat comma', because it
is simply a comment that is replaced by a comma if spotted in a function
call or declaration. Thus the procedure name would be 'addvectors'.
--
Ron House. USQ
(ho...@helios.usq.edu.au) Toowoomba, Australia.
Chris Osborne
>> New thread! New thread! What is the grammatical name for the
>>more and more common quasi-compound word, in which two words are
>>printed with no space in between them, but keeping capital letters
>>at the beginning of each word? These are always brand names of some
>>kind, as the initial capital would imply, and often are used by new
>>banks. Examples are: TeamBank, and ...
> The term I've always heard is InterCaps (which has the advantage,
>when written, of being self-descriptive). Not only do you see it in
>brand names, but also in certain programming styles...Mathematica and
>Macintosh Toolbox both have these all over.
In the programming environment this has recently become a popular style of
coding. It is known as the 'Hungarian Notation' and makes souce code much
easier to read when all commands, functions and variables are written this
way. The 'Hungarian Notation' is a bit more complicated in that variables
are also prefixed with a single (lowercase) character representing the
variable type.
MakeSane(cChrisOsborne)
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
We know what we're knowing, Chris Osborne
but we can't say what we've seen... University of Natal, Durban
- Talking Heads Internet: osbo...@cc.und.ac.za
Peter Moylan
usage.english, but I just couldn't let this one pass.
In article <osborn...@cc.und.ac.za>, osbo...@cc.und.ac.za
(Chris Osborne) writes:
[re InterCaps]
> In the programming environment this has recently become a popular style of
> coding. It is known as the 'Hungarian Notation' and makes souce code much
> easier to read when all commands, functions and variables are written this
> way. The 'Hungarian Notation' is a bit more complicated in that variables
> are also prefixed with a single (lowercase) character representing the
> variable type.
Not quite. The use of upper case in naming program objects has been
around a lot longer than Hungarian notation. (But, as usual, C
programmers find out about new trends years after everyone else.)
The term "Hungarian Notation" refers specifically to the string of
gobbledegook which is prepended to every name - and it's not just
one character, but typically several. The term refers to the fact
that the resulting program is supposed to look like a Hungarian
phone book (a presumption which is a little insulting to Hungarians,
in my opinion).
There are two theories as to why this notation is used. The first is
that programs in the language C tend to be plagued by mysterious
errors caused by the fact that the language lets you do some very
stupid things (I've observed that C programmers take a long time to
get their programs working), and the Hungarian notation is an attempt
to emulating the type-checking mechanisms found in more modern
programming languages.
The second theory, which I prefer, is that it's an attempt to protect
against software theft. The great virtue of the C language is that
nobody can read programs written in it, and so people are less likely
to steal your software. But software pirates are remarkably
persistent, so Hungarian notation was introduced to make the programs
even less comprehensible.
(This is going to start a flame war, so let me make one thing clear:
I'm not speaking from ignorance, I use C extensively for some very
large projects. I didn't hate the language nearly so much before I
was forced to use it; and I actually liked the Hungarian notation
until I started using it and saw the resulting mess.)
Followups to e-mail, please. I feel really guilty about involving the
gentle alt.usage.english folks - almost the only civilized group in
the whole news system - in a language battle.
--
Peter Moylan ee...@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
"Real Programmers can write C in any language"
peter_...@quickmail.ycc.yale.edu
>about learning to type better is really lame - the _ is in a rather
>
How about "learn to type in a better system." In the Dvorak layout the hyphen
and underscore (shift of hyphen as in Qwerty) is one key to the right of the
right pinky in home position. Real easy. (By the way it only took me a couple
of weeks to convert from Qwerty to Dvorak and when I can still type reasonably
well on a Qwerty keyboard if I have to. And Dvorak is sooooo cool.)
OrMaybeNot.
Sincerely,
Peter Seibel
------------------------------
e-mail: peter_...@quickmail.ycc.yale.edu
tel: 203-436-0619
snail: P.O. Box 306 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520
------------------------------
Klaus Ole Kristiansen
>tch...@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>>Or this one?
>> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
>Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice? The argument
>about learning to type better is really lame - the _ is in a rather
>inconvinient position. I know of no one who likes typing it.
COBOL allows - in names, as in long-compound-name.
Nice, isn't it? :-)
Klaus O K
Philip Daniels
>
>In <1992Feb19.2...@news.gvl.unisys.com> hop...@gvlf9-b.gvl.unisys.com (Bill Hopkins) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Feb19.1...@panix.com> p...@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
>>writes [about WordsWithCapitalLettersEmbedded]:
>>>
>
>the blame. His Pascal style encourages this, and of course there's Modula-2,
>which actually enforces it, using things like WriteString for the names of
>library functions (and because M-2 is case-sensitive, you actually *have* to
>write it that way--my Modula-2 programming career lasted about 4 hours because
>of this extremely annoying convention, having to remember not just the
>spelling and parameterization of each function call, but whatever quirky
>capitalization it had, as well). I'm not suggesting that the practice
Quirky? No, it's very simple. Every part of a function call or variable
which would be written as a seperate word in English has a capital; for example
PutLine;
GetReal;
StdIn; (some are abbreviated).
However this practice tends to look rather awful when one of the sub-words is
one letter in length:
ThisIsASimpleExample;
>originated with Pascal or M-2, as they appeared later than the languages
>above. Just that they probably helped the spread of this blight.
>
>Ross
>
>--
>Ross A. Alford
>Department of Zoology Internet: zl...@marlin.jcu.edu.au
>James Cook University Phone: +61 77 81 4732
>Townsville, Qld 4811 Australia
Phil.
David Casseres
>
> In article <1992Feb21....@uniwa.uwa.oz.au> gu...@uniwa.uwa.oz.au (D John McKenna) writes:
> >tch...@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>
> >>Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>
> >> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
>
> >>Or this one?
>
> >> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
>
> >Quick - which one do you want to type more than twice? The argument
> >about learning to type better is really lame - the _ is in a rather
> >inconvinient position. I know of no one who likes typing it.
>
> I don't mind typing the underscores. It's no harder than capitalizing
> characters, and it is *infinitely* easier to read.
Well, I for one find a long_name_full_of_underscores infinitely harder to
read, as well as harder and slower to type accurately. So don't assume that
your own preference is universal.
Anyway, we're a long way from English usage here, aren't we? Naming-
convention wars are understood by most experienced programmers to be a
monstrous waste of time -- the important thing is to have a convention, and
conform to it within the group of programmers who share each others' code.
Back to English usage: I find the most curious thing about the CapitalWords
convention is the way it leaks out of its intended boundaries, leading people
to write "MicroSoft" and "SmallTalk" when in fact each of these names is
spelled with just one (initial) capital. The most bizarre case is the
capitalization of *syllables* within a long word -- I occasionally find
myself typing something like "interNational" or "popuLation." The mind is
strange.
David Casseres
Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University
> The term [Hungarian notation] refers to the fact
> that the resulting program is supposed to look like a Hungarian
> phone book (a presumption which is a little insulting to Hungarians,
> in my opinion).
I first read about the term, and its derivation, in PC Magazine (probably
the best magazine in the computer industry, in my opinion). According to
that, it's called "Hungarian" because it was popularized by a person of
Hungarian descent, one Charles Simonyi, now working at Microsoft.
I suppose it was called "Hungarian" rather than something like "Simonyian"
("Simonyiese"? "Simonyish"?) by analogy with "Polish" notation, which was
called that because people couldn't pronounce Lukasiewicz!
Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Another C-hater
PS: How *do* you pronounce Lukasiewicz?
Mark Tillotson
> Quick: which set of identifiers can you read faster:
>
> MacintoshApplicationsProgrammerInDisguise
> XtDisplayStringConversionWarning
> XrmAllocMoreQuarkToStringTable
> UninstallRootColormapQScanner
> XawTextPopdownSearchAction
> SecModeChangePermitted
> NocacheMmapPrivatePrev
> DaHitachiDK81510Sizes
>
> Or this one?
>
> Macintosh_applications_programmer_in_disguise
> Xt_display_string_conversion_warning
> Xrm_alloc_more_quark_to_string_table
> uninstall_root_colormap_Qscanner
> Xaw_text_popdown_search_action
> sec_mode_change_permitted
> nocache_mmap_private_prev
> da_Hitachi_DK815_10_sizes
well, in Algol68 you can go one better:
macintosh applications programmer in disguise
xt display string conversion warning
xrm alloc more quark to string table
uninstall root colormap qscanner
xaw text popdown search action
sec mode change permitted
nocache mmap private prev
da hitachi dk815 10 sizes
If my memory lives up to its name, I believe the default stropping
(what a fine word!) convention is to treat all sequences of whitespace
and/or underscores as equivalent to a single underscore, so that the
following are equivalent identifiers:
a b c
a_b_c
a_ b_ c
a b c
a____b c
I might be imagining this equivalence of space to _, but either way
this lack of dependance on the precise nature of the word-break, but
rather to treat word-break lexically as one character, always seemed
neat to me, and sadly lacking in many languages.
Of course, to be able to parse a language with whitespace inside
identifiers, you lose the ability to use juxtaposition as an operator
between identifiers---it wouldn't work for Lisp for example!! I
suspect the major reason for including this feature in Algol68 was to
facilitate writing of meaningful programs that could also be
read as poetry 8-)
--
------------------------------------------------------
|\ /| | , M. Tillotson Harlequin Ltd. \
| \/ | /\| |/\ |< ma...@uk.co.harlqn Barrington Hall,\
| | \_| | | \ +44 223 872522 Barrington, \
I came, I saw, I core-dumped... Cambridge CB2 5RG \
John Lacey
>COBOL allows - in names, as in long-compound-name.
>Nice, isn't it? :-)
Which, COBOL, or it's variable name syntax? (Sorry ....)
For the record, most Lisps allow '-', and many others besides, like
'/' and '.' and ':' and ....
--
John Lacey, jo...@whale.cs.indiana.edu ---Sting, "Russians"
I don't subscribe to this point of view. It'd be such an ignorant thing to do.
John Lacey
>Back to English usage: I find the most curious thing about the CapitalWords
>convention is the way it leaks out of its intended boundaries, leading people
>to write "MicroSoft" and "SmallTalk" when in fact each of these names is
>spelled with just one (initial) capital. The most bizarre case is the
>capitalization of *syllables* within a long word -- I occasionally find
>myself typing something like "interNational" or "popuLation." The mind is
>strange.
I've made the MicroSoft error myself, more's the pity. On the latter
point, I'm sure everyone'noticed those WordS with capitals on both
ends. It was even the topic of a discussion (in this group?) a couple
of years ago.
Then there are cases like TeX and NeXT, whose unusual design has made
for unusual capitalization in plain text. (For those who've not had
the pleasure, TeX is spelled with a capital E *lowered* about half a
letter's height, and NeXT with a lowercase-shaped `e' the same size as
the capital `N', `X', and `T'.)
mary tabasko
(Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
>
>I suppose it was called "Hungarian" rather than something like "Simonyian"
>("Simonyiese"? "Simonyish"?) by analogy with "Polish" notation, which was
>called that because people couldn't pronounce Lukasiewicz!
>
The closest ASCII approximation I can come up with is this:
"Lu-ka-SHEH-vich"
Hope that's some help,
Mary
**********************************************************************
* This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it *
* is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to *
* be admired and enjoyed than used. -- H.D. Thoreau *
**********************************************************************
--
Mary Tabasko (no relation to the hot-sauce folks)
Snail Mail: 371 S. Negley Ave., Apt. 5 MaBellNet: 412/362-0544
Pittsburgh, PA 15232-1110
Scharle
|> In article <1992Feb28....@waikato.ac.nz> l...@waikato.ac.nz
|> (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
|> >
|> >I suppose it was called "Hungarian" rather than something like "Simonyian"
|> >("Simonyiese"? "Simonyish"?) by analogy with "Polish" notation, which was
|> >called that because people couldn't pronounce Lukasiewicz!
|> >
|> >PS: How *do* you pronounce Lukasiewicz?
|>
|> The closest ASCII approximation I can come up with is this:
|> "Lu-ka-SHEH-vich"
Excuse me for a bit of pedantry here. The "L" in "Lukasiewicz" is a barred L,
which is pronounced like an English "W" -- so I would say "woo-kah-SHAY-
vich". (I hope I'm right about this, I don't speak Polish so I'm relying on
secondary sources for the pronunciation, although I am sure about the barred
L.)
--
Tom Scharle |cm65n6@irishmvs(Bitnet)
Room G003 Computing Center |sch...@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu(Internet)
University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556-0539 USA
mary tabasko
(Scharle) writes:
>In article <13...@pitt.UUCP>, tab...@icarus.lis.pitt.edu (mary tabasko) writes:
>|> In article <1992Feb28....@waikato.ac.nz> l...@waikato.ac.nz
>|> (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
>|> >
>|> >PS: How *do* you pronounce Lukasiewicz?
>|>
>|> The closest ASCII approximation I can come up with is this:
>|> "Lu-ka-SHEH-vich"
>|> ....
> Excuse me for a bit of pedantry here. The "L" in "Lukasiewicz" is
>a barred L, which is pronounced like an English "W" -- so I would say
>secondary sources for the pronunciation, although I am sure about the barred
>L.)
You are right. I was just looking at the ASCII spelling; after I
had OK'd the post, I realized that it may very well have been a
barred-L and not a simple L at all. I was going to repost, but I got
distracted.... Thanks for waking me up!
-- Mary
Andreas Genau, F3.MMK 2078
cited blaming Wirth for introducing WordsWithCapitalLettersEmbedded in
function identifiers etc. But why should Wirth be blamed ? He is an
german speaking swiss. Within the german language upper and lower letters
play an important (for pupils in school an often awkward) role.
The actual discussion concerning the problem is, that texts with capitalized
beginnings of words are harder to write, but much easier to read. I think,
that the same might be true for identifiers in programs, at least for
german speaking programmers. I myself would prefer WordsWithCapitalLettersEmbedded
to words-with-capital-letters-embedded (In a program, not in a text).
So, this might not be helpfull for anyone who has difficulties with capitel
letters, but perhaps he or she may be less angry about it.
Sorry for poor english,
Andreas Genau.