[Pharo-project] image overload
Hi All, I'm sure Im opening an old topic but anyway, as I was riding the train to work today I saw a shop called "Audio Images" and it struck me how overloaded the term image is, and how poor a term for the contents of the image file Smalltalk image is. What's in the image is a snapshot of... almost the entire system (minus platform-specific virtual machine and possibly minus sources). So Smalltalk system file would be a far better term and stsys a more unique file extension (and according to Wikipedia STS is unused too). I can imagine that changing form image would be hugely expensive in documentation terms (docs, websites, workspaces, etc, etc). But I can at least dream of a better term. P.S. I know, wasting one's time worrying about names. Almost as bad as worrying about colours "And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should be."
On Friday 12 March 2010 11:29:20 pm Eliot Miranda wrote:
I'm sure Im opening an old topic but anyway, as I was riding the train to work today I saw a shop called "Audio Images" and it struck me how overloaded the term image is, and how poor a term for the contents of the image file Smalltalk image is. What's in the image is a snapshot of... almost the entire system (minus platform-specific virtual machine and possibly minus sources). So Smalltalk system file would be a far better term and stsys a more unique file extension (and according to Wikipedia STS is unused too).
If ever we change the image format, we should also change its name and extension. The first time people hear the term, they think of 'picture'. I suppose the term image is a Mac hangover :-). I prefer "bit bag" (*.bag) or "bag of bits" (*.bob). BTW, sts is already taken (Microsoft Visual C) Subbu
Interesting idea. Stef Begin forwarded message:
From: Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com> Date: March 12, 2010 6:59:20 PM GMT+01:00 To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list <squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org>, Pharo Development <pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr>, vwnc NC <vwnc@cs.uiuc.edu> Subject: [squeak-dev] image overload Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list <squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Hi All,
I'm sure Im opening an old topic but anyway, as I was riding the train to work today I saw a shop called "Audio Images" and it struck me how overloaded the term image is, and how poor a term for the contents of the image file Smalltalk image is. What's in the image is a snapshot of... almost the entire system (minus platform-specific virtual machine and possibly minus sources). So Smalltalk system file would be a far better term and stsys a more unique file extension (and according to Wikipedia STS is unused too). I can imagine that changing form image would be hugely expensive in documentation terms (docs, websites, workspaces, etc, etc). But I can at least dream of a better term.
P.S. I know, wasting one's time worrying about names. Almost as bad as worrying about colours
"And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should be."
participants (3)
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Eliot Miranda -
K. K. Subramaniam -
Stéphane Ducasse