Re: [doc] User Manual Suggestion

From: Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 25, 2009, 00:19 UTC
Message-ID: <b4087cc50904241719w64bc6074xe5b8d341ef9f51ed@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20090424233509.GA15341@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 18:35, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 06:31:26PM -0500, Michael Witten wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 18:14, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>> > Junio suggested "object name" in another thread, which I think is nicely
>> > descriptive.
>>
>> The reason I don't like "object name" is that "name" has connotations
>> that don't go well with the idea of referencing. Isn't "address" (or
>> "location") better in this sense?
>
> I'm not sure I agree, but if you are concerned with "name", then I think
> something like "object id" or "object identifier" would probably be
> better. "address" and "location" imply to me that they are part of a
> contiguous set. And while technically they may be considered addresses
> of a sparse 2^160 array, I'm not sure that explanation is really helping
> new users understand what is going on.

You make an interesting point about implied contiguousness, but I don't think any git operation is in danger of evoking that thought. I mainly like the idea of "address" and "location", because they go extremely well with "pointer", "handle" and the idea of a "git store (memory)". Most importantly, this is an analogy that has been around a long time.