[antlr-interest] what's in a name?

Brian Hanafee bhanafee at gmail.com
Sat Aug 29 12:50:35 PDT 2009


Trying to come up with ways to maximize the audience who would find  
the book if they didn't know what they were really looking for.  
Someone who already has an idea of what they want will probably find  
it regardless. Here are a few hooks: First, your publisher is probably  
right that DSL should be there somewhere, but in the title rather than  
subtitle is a gamble because only people who already know the acronym  
would catch it. With DSL in the main title, it wouldn't surprise me a  
bit to find the book stuck in the networking section at my local  
Borders or Barnes & Noble (I do miss Stacey's in SF - they would have  
figured it out).  So keep the acronym somewhere in the subtitle. I'd  
try to keep "ANTLR" in the subtitle too, again so it pops up in  
search. A lot of people first might first encounter ANTLR as a chained  
dependency for some other project that's using it, and again that  
could be in their search terms even when the idea of a DSL hasn't  
really popped up yet. GoF references the basic pattern as  
"interpreter". Also remember that for a typical undergraduate,  
compilers was either an upper division class to be avoided, or the  
hardest computer science class they took.

How about:
"Domain Language Patterns"
That echos the GoF reference without using up all the words and using  
"Domain" rather than "DSL" makes it feel more accessible to someone  
who isn't yet familiar with the subject. It might hit on a few more  
searches too.

Here are a few subtitles to play with:
"Building DSLs with Examples in ANTLR"
"Implementing DSLs with Examples in ANTLR"
"Using ANTLR to Build DSLs"
"Techniques for Building DSLs with ANTLR"
"Techniques for Building DSLs in the Real World with ANTLR"

Stretching to get the GoF pattern name "interpreter" in there:
"DSL Compilers and Interpreters with Examples in ANTLR"
"Interpreters for DSLs with Examples in ANTLR"
"Using ANTLR to Build DSL Interpreters"
"Using ANTLR to Build DSL Interpreters and Compilers"


-- Brian Hanafee



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