> Luca de Alfaro wrote: >> I, for one, don't believe that open source projects should necessarily >> avoid slang words. "Gimp" is a relatively obscure slang word. Let me >> define this: most English speakers speak English as a second language, >> and i bet 99% of them are not familiar with the unofficial uses of the >> word "Gimp". From the responses to similar threads in the past, not >> even a majority of US speakers knows the meaning of "Gimp" (of course, >> this may not be necessarily true locally in all communities). >> Moreover, these slang uses come and go. Yes, they may offend a small >> percent of US users, but that's far from the majority. There are too >> many such slang words that come and go to worry about them. >>
1. Gimp means "to walk with a limp" in English and is slang. Oddly, it also means "vigor, spirit" and that is not slang. It also means " a stiff trim border or course thread used for making outlines of designs or designs on garments." This also is not slang. Most English speakers generally relate gimp to the slang variant, most of us are familiar with it and most of us consider it to be something negative. 2, The vast majority of English speakers have no reason to know the meaning of GIMP, as it applies to the graphics application suite. They don't use it and most would find it to difficult to use even if they did know what it was. They always have something much less complicated and more understandable to them to meet their everyday needs. The same most probably is true in most parts of the world. 3. The Linux community, in general, has always been stuck on naming their functions, progs, apps, etc. in a manner that someone heavy into programming and development can relate to but it always seems to leave the actual application user in the fog because they cannot relate it to what it actually is or does. They get stuck with the technical description. Imagine if Corel developed Draw! under the name VGRP for vector graphics rendering program. Corel VGRP! Oh yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon. 4. An application should always be named with the target audience being considered if you're looking for product exposure. In the case of The Gimp, the target audience is not programmers and software developers. When the intended audience sees the name they need it to relate to "graphics" in their thoughts. The word Gimp does not even come close. It gives us mere mortals absolutely no indication of what it actually is or does, even though it has tremendous artistic and image manipulation capabilities. 5. The Gimp's GUI, unfortunately, is in direct opposition to human logic and our normal thought patterns. I have no other way to describe it. I know of no one under any OS that emulates The Gimp's GUI strategy. There's probably good reason for that. _______________________________________________ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
