[bt-devel] Naming Conventions and other stuff to know

[Jonathan Hughes]

Hey Everyone,

    I have received some e-mails about naming, and I know that this is a
point of misunderstanding so I thought I would quickly discuss it and
hopefully we can come to an agreement and have a naming convention that
everyone can use. I have sent this both to the GnomeSword develop mailing
list and the BibleTime one because it affects them also.
    First for naming conventions, this is what I have up on the new Sword
website, it is a collection of taking the naming that others have put on
different software and also some creativity on my end:

'CrossWire Bible Society'- is the Bible Society that Troy started, it is the
sponsor of The Sword Project. The entity of CrossWire Bible Society has not
developed anything but simply commissioned The Sword Project to develop
everything that we have. This is an important distinction, sometimes I see
that we say, "CrossWire Bible Society has packaged text modules for
distribution" but this is not true, The Sword Project has. This will be an
important point when Troy wishes to commission some other projects under
CrossWire Bible Society, I know he has always wanted to do a translation
support project. And if a new project is started under CrossWire Bible
Society there maybe some confusion if we can divide the two works of the
different projects.

'The Sword Project'- This is the collection of volunteers that produces the
Bible software we have hosted on crosswire.org/sword/. I have the 'Sword'
not all capitalized because I don't think that the 'Sword' in The Sword
Project is an acronym for anything and that is what in general all capitals
means. The Sword Project can be shorten to just 'Sword', in referring to the
project, but to keep it clear for users we should try and use the full 'The
Sword Project' as much as we can.

'BibleCS'- This is the name of The Sword Project's win32 front-end. Why?
Because that is what the developers call it and so there is no reason that
users can't call it the same thing. Some discussion has been on what it
means, etc. but to be honest users don't care too much about that they just
need a name to attach to, so they know what we are talking about when we
refer to BibleCS.

'Sword API'- is the Sword Application Programming Interface that provides
the basic functions that are needed for all general Bible software. Once
again this name describes the software but to a user they will just think
that it is a name.

'Sword Module Add-ins'- is the name of the text modules that users download
and install to get content in their Sword API based Bible program. I got
this name off of the old Sword website, and I think it is a good description
as well as a name for them. I guess we could shorten it to 'Sword Modules'
or 'Modules' somewhere in content but to keep it standard we should use
'Sword Module Add-ins' as much as possible.

    I hope I have not presumed anything, or stepped on people's toes but
what do people think of this naming convention. And please remember to look
at it from a general users point of view and also these are the names I used
on the new Sword website, so it would take sometime to change them if I have
to. :) I would especially like feedback from Troy because he is the Sword
Project Leader. Whatever we decide lets decide it soon and not drag it all
out.

In Christ,
Jonathan
jhughes@crosswire.org