On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 at 10:34:32 am BST, Phil Hudson <phil.hud...@iname.com> wrote:
> The term "mail alias" itself seems to me to be poorly chosen, bespeaking > an inward-looking, comp-sci-technical, "historical reasons" (IOW no > reason) viewpoint rather than an outward-looking, user- and > usability-focused one. Much as I love the Unix way, this is an example > of where Unix tradition sucks and is really user hostile. We're talking > about *lists* and/or *groups*, not "aliases". *Those* are the words most > users will expect and look for; those are the words BBDB should use. > > I suggest we standardize on "group". I can rename and write a > `define-obsolete-*-alias' declaration for each existing `*-mail-alias' > declaration and -- the important bit -- update the doc strings. That > seems consistent with the way v3 has tried to rename lots of opaque and > unintuitive "legacy" symbol names thus far. Maintainers can then > gradually eliminate the "obsolete symbol" compiler warnings over time. > > Before I (attempt to) code this and submit a patch, can anyone see a > reason I've missed why it's a bad idea? Replying to myself... I've thought of one, namely Gnus' use of "group" (meaning/derived from "newsgroup") for what most MUAs call "mailbox", "folder" or "label". So... how about substituting "mailing-list" for "mail-alias" throughout? Both "list" and "group" lose the sense that "alias" has of being applicable to either an individual or a group. Maybe that's a reason for keeping "mail-alias". Now I'm leaning toward declaring a matching *-mailing-list-* (Lisp) alias for each *-mail-alias-* declaration, without declaring anything obsolete. I would add " (that is, a mailing list)" or the moral equivalent to each occurrence of "mail alias" in the doc strings. This is tricky stuff. I don't want to make things worse with an ill-considered change. Maybe I should let it drop for now. -- Phil Hudson http://hudson-it.ddns.net @UWascalWabbit PGP/GnuPG ID: 0x887DCA63 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y _______________________________________________ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
