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From: ccplumb@spurge.uwaterloo.ca (Colin Plumb)
Subject: Re: Jargon File Editorial Philosophy
Message-ID: <1990Dec15.213938.4581@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1Yh2D8#44K9D41f8QQk5qw1fx64Q7TX=eric@snark.thyrsus.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 90 21:39:38 GMT
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In article <1Yh2D8#44K9D41f8QQk5qw1fx64Q7TX=eric@snark.thyrsus.com> eric@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:

>ISSUE #1: THE PAST VS. THE PRESENT

I strongly feel that all of the vocabulary should be kept in the main section,
with some notation (maybe a bit less galling to those who still use it than
"obsolete" - "historical" perhaps) to indicate it's out of currency.  But
keep it there, including pdl, definition 2.  pdl itself is mostly (cover
thyself) obsoleted by "stack", but it's useful to know.

But I really don't think things should be deleted.  Think like the OED.

>ISSUE #2: LEXICON OR ENCYCLOPEDIA?

I suggest moving the background material to an appendix or somehow out of
the lexicon.  (Electronically, the appendices should just be separate files
for anonymous ftp or posting or whatever.)  It's already sort of scattered,
with a fair amount in the introduction, and perhaps a good way to organize
things would be to have the introduction be a brief summary of the apropriate
appendi(x|ces).  (Note to regexp entry: the syntax comes in very handy in real
life, although the choice of . as the wildcard character is annoying when
applying it to filenames and larger chunks of english text.)

(If I were to organize the ftp archive, I'd have the jargon file start
with AOS or wherever it does and split out all the less structured
material, including the introduction to separate files.  The lexicon
itself evolves fastest, I believe, and commentators don't really need
to read the introduction n times.  Making a single all-inclusive file
which tracks the segmented version is what make is for, if you feel the need.)

>Another (and subtler) problem is organizational. Should the File be strictly
>a lexicon, or more in the nature of an encyclopedia? Right now, material
>on the culture that doesn't fit the lexicon format is divided between entries
>like ORIENTAL FOOD, MUSIC, and HACKER HUMOR (on the one hand) and appendices
>(on the other). There's also more `encyclopedic' stuff I'm intending to merge
>in, like a revised and expanded version of the `Portrait of J. Random Hacker'
>I posted here a while back.
>
>So this problem is going to become more acute. On the one hand, there's a
>certain esthetic and historical appeal to sticking close to a pure lexicon
>style; on the other hand, this means proliferating appendices like crazy if
>I want to include even the breadth of stuff that's already in, and that's
>klugey. And this leads straight to...
>
>ISSUE #3: INCLUDE MORE FOLKLORE?
>
>There's lots of stuff out there (like the ThingKing spoof, the story of
>Mel the Real Programmer, the DEC WARS/UNIX WARS postings, etc. etc.) that
>would offer humorous insights into hacker culture. Stuff that's hard to
>find. Guy Steele even wants to include the entire INTERCAL manual!

Yes, the Intercal manual is a useful historical document...  It's
basically a question of, do you want to take this on?  It's not
strictly jargon file, but a paper publisher would still be interested,
as would the hacker community.  You could include it as part of the
extended jargon file, or you could decide it's too much work.  Editor's
call.

>What do I do about this kind of material? Include it in appendices? (That
>might cause the already-large on-line version of the jargon file to bloat
>unnacceptably). Include it in the paper version only and run a folklore mail
>server on snark? Forget it because it opens up too big a can of worms?

>ISSUE #4: PROPER-NAME ENTRIES

I won't flame you either way, but the general question is whether nicknames
for proper nouns are fair game, or is there some reason for distinguishing
Marginal Hacks Hall from The Mediocre QUUX.

>What do all of you on the net think I should do about this?

H'm... you do, however, raise the point that the collection of nicknames is
very limited and uniformity argues it should be broadened or eliminated.
I don't know.

By the way, I just heard the following term today, and have a draft definition:

GANG BANG: the use of large numbers of loosely-coupled programmers in
an attempt to produce a great deal of functionality in a short time.
While there have been memorable gang bangs (ref: that over-the-weekend
assembler port mentioned in Hackers), most are perpetrated by large
companies trying to meet deadlines and produce enormous buggy code
entirely lacking in orthogonality.  When market-driven managers make a
list of all the features the competition have and assign one programmer
to implement each, they seem to fail to notice the feature of
maintaining strong invariants, like relational integrity.

Thinking of which, are epithets like the following to be relegated to
Programming Pearls?
"A design is complete not when there is nothing to add, but when
there is nothing to take away."
-- 
	-Colin