[antlr-interest] we need a name for a new rewriting tool

[Ger Hobbelt]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 10:58 PM, Arnulf Heller <aheller at gmx.at> wrote:
> I'd call it "Brian" because the romans forced him to re-write "Romans, go
> home" a hundred times :-)

After reminding him of his education. Probably a disgruntled
ex-teacher, that centurion.  :-)

>
> http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-08.htm
>
> Maybe it could also serve as an acronym:
>
> "Because Rewriting Is Amazingly Neat" or so :-)



+1 for Brian.


Why? Oh, about 101 reasons. In no particular order:

001) Not to put too fine a point on it, but 'morph*', 'transform*' and
all that has way too much association [for me] with something that
could have crawled out of some Thunderpuss X caped-hero-in-80's-tights
DC comic on a bad-hair day (yep, I'm 'Old Country' and I like my
comics to have a wee bitty of a story line, thank you very much. You
can flame me off list if you feel that primal urge.)

010) giving the spelling ability these days, you'd quickly get 'Brain'
which, well, seems suitably ironic to me for something at the dawn of
the 21st century. Now a typo in (morph|transform|rewrite).* would,
well, I'd rather not think about it. r3wr8? Yuck.

011) Name != product description. If VIM started as a brand name and
ended up as a type name for all related products; if a gnu from Africa
can get some Gates to rattle and worry about his future, and a bison
has all but eliminated the yacc by proxy, well, then I'm sure a Brian
(maybe assisted by Tom) can inherit the world. Right?

100) I kinda dig Antler. It's a visual. (okay, okay, it's ANTLR, but
what the heck) At least you can 'feel' it. Like a bit of bison trophy,
but much less endangered, so if you got a gun and the money, you may
still shoot one in the wild and bring it home. No import restrictions
either. Now 'Morph' does absolutely nothing here, nor would
Transformer (I don't get excited over magnetic alternating current
devices in /that/ way) or any other of the 'technically appropriate
terms'.

101) Please, have a bit of compassion with us white collar criminal
types who have to suffer pointy haired bosses. Imagine he wants to
know what the heck you're doing and you say: "I have applied Brian to
the problem and if I guide things well, we may have it fixed by
Monday." Now that's some career-advancing opportunity talk right
there. You're a made man, son. ... Now contrast this with the
scientifically correct version of same: "Yes sir, I'm trying to
dewrinkle the bugs in the Metamorph Rotoplooker 114, but it's been
crapping up on me all day, dang it!" and the boss goes: "WHAT?!" Can
you say: "pink slip"?


Besides, think about your kids. And ours.  Your legacy!  It's way
better to find out you've been named after something scientific and
cool than after your silly-joke exhorting, youth-bashing, filthy
cigar-puffing right-wing republican granddaddy (named Morph). ;-)


It's just a thought. Brand name doesn't have to 'describe' the
product. It's got to 'be' the product.

My 0.02 EUR.

Back to lurking...

Cheers,

Ger



PS: since ANTLR was borne out of PCCTS, the new one might as well be
borne out of Sorcerer in some odd way, say, Gandalf, Rincewind, Esme
(after all, tree rewriting may be considered headology), Eskarina, ...
(if you care about matching .com and/or .org domains: all the
Pratchett ones are taken, I believe.) Still, I like Brian better.

--
Met vriendelijke groeten / Best regards,

Ger Hobbelt

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