Naming, Terminology and Understanding all the New Awesomeness that is Revolution

Quote from: splittingred at Oct 03, 2008, 04:14 PM

Container doesn’t work because it doesn’t imply action - which is what is happening when resolvers/validators occur. I’ve already explained why Bundle doesn’t work.

But why the Container should imply action when resolver or validator does the action and they imply it? I understood that vehicle is just a container for objects and resolver / validator does the actions?

Btw, I don’t mean to be a pain... I’m just writing my opinions, so don’t take this as negative critics. I love Revolution and all that it brings!

I am thrilled with the shape of this thread. Things are coming out of the mud and its wonderful.

Shaun, I’ve posted the terms for flourishment into the wiki.

I’d like to echo the idea of dictionary over lexicon. and topics over focus. In most worlds dictionaries hold definitions for terms (yes lexicon is more accurate but less understandable (and lets remember it’ll likely be dictionary in other languages anyway.) We can enhance the meaning of topics by using the word focus within the context of defining topics. Focus and especially foci are not terms I use in that context, ever.

I’d also love to understand more about Workspaces I go there and I see the packages and provisioner stuff there but don’t understand the choice of workspaces to describe this.

Vehicle is not a winner yet. I’m working with the concept but until I get a clear understanding of its true function/process I’ll reserve judgement.

Keep up the discussion.

Cheers,

Jay

I’d also love to understand more about Workspaces I go there and I see the packages and provisioner stuff there but don’t understand the choice of workspaces to describe this.

In my view, the choice of workspaces is future-proofing, as in later releases, MODx Revolution will be able to handle multiple workspaces (as opposed to the singular workspace that is currently supported) - what the overall vision of multiple workspaces will be and how they will work is one I’ll leave to splittingred/Opengeek to expand on.

What is exactly the single workspace that’s allowed today?

As for dictionary/lexicon, Jay, you make excellent points about it being dictionary in another language. Dictionary and lexicon mean the same thing. I’ll argue for lexicon, by 2 points:

• $modx->dictionary is freaking annoying to type. $modx->lexicon is much easier. This, like garry said, is a really, really important consideration. I know that sounds stupid, but try coding that phrase in over 2000 places in Revolution and you’ll understand.
• Using the phrase Lexicon allows for us to do lexical analysis later, and not confuse people.

Quote from: doze at Oct 03, 2008, 04:28 PM

But why the Container should imply action when resolver or validator does the action and they imply it? I understood that vehicle is just a container for objects and resolver / validator does the actions?

Fair enough. Container to me just sounds too much like something that sits and groups things - ie, The Container Store. Vehicles in Revolution are not meant for grouping or organization - they’re meant solely for transport purposes.

Btw, I don’t mean to be a pain... I’m just writing my opinions, so don’t take this as negative critics. I love Revolution and all that it brings!

You’re not being a pain at all. Making excellent points, actually.

Quote from: rthrash at Oct 03, 2008, 04:38 PM

What is exactly the single workspace that’s allowed today?

It’s the ’core’ workspace. In future releases (post-2.0), we’ll be building in the ability to have multiple workspaces. Eclipse uses a similar model.

The idea behind this is that you could have different sites that use different 3rd Party Packages that you don’t want shared across each site; you want them separate. Jason has much more vision on this; I’ll let him explain further.

P.S. I’ve updated the Glossary of Terms page to give a more detailed description of things.

P.P.S. Put Foci to rest - we’ll definitely be renaming that to ’Topics’.

I’m a developer watching from the sidelines. Just reiterating a couple of points that have already been made:

1. I agree with doze that Revolution should use common terms where appropriate. Software should be as simple to use as possible, and all these new terms come across as complex. So I prefer language over lexicon or even dictionary.

2. Related terms should be explicitly related. For example, isn’t a "focus" a group of definitions within a lexicon? If so, I think a focus should be a "lexiconpart" or something similar. Currently, there are no obvious relationships between all these terms.

Quote from: rickj at Oct 03, 2008, 05:13 PM

I’m a developer watching from the sidelines. Just reiterating a couple of points that have already been made:

Thanks for jumping into the fray.

1. I agree with doze that Revolution should use common terms where appropriate. Software should be as simple to use as possible, and all these new terms come across as complex. So I prefer language over lexicon or even dictionary.

Well, language wont work, because lexicons can contain multiple languages.

2. Related terms should be explicitly related. For example, isn’t a "focus" a group of definitions within a lexicon? If so, I think a focus should be a "lexiconpart" or something similar. Currently, there are no obvious relationships between all these terms.

Foci/Focus will be renamed to Topic.

Quote from: splittingred at Oct 03, 2008, 04:55 PM

$modx->dictionary is freaking annoying to type. $modx->lexicon is much easier.

How about $modx->lang? Or is language technically incorrect in this context?

Edit: Ok, lang won’t work thanks for the clarification above.

Quote from: splittingred at Oct 03, 2008, 03:51 PM

Okay, with that in mind, where does bundle fail as a definition? Well, first off, a Vehicle is not by any means a collection of objects - it’s a carrier for only one object, and in that carrier, there are things that can be performed (resolvers/validators). Resolvers and validators perform actions based on the object - they are not on par level with the object in terms of primacy.

So a vehicle only contains one thing, but might also be accompanied by a bundle of associated things that tell the thing that moves them around what to do with the vehicle contents? Is that one thing or multiple things? Does the single vehicle item have any value of itself or must it always be accompanied by resolvers/validators?

Secondly, Bundle seems to imply more of the package definition - however, now you’re saying a Bundle is a package that is put in a package. That gets confusing. Separating the term bundle from package is necessary, since there can be multiple vehicles in a package.

Hence my container suggestion. Containers, btw, keep the vehicle analogy going only they’re more about transportation in all honesty: transporting important goods and content by rail, truck, air and road. They have manifests attached to them and so on...

Definitely container conflicts with the Resource Tree, so maybe extending the specifics to two whole words as opposed to one makes sense: Transport Container and Resource Container or Container Document, etc. In fact, container in general may have to be revisited in Revo due to the fact that in Revo, you’re no longer limited to just web pages and weblinks in the document tree. The legacy modx "container" may have to become parent resources or something like that in Revo. Probably a good topic for a new thread completely.

Vehicle’s definition fits it perfectly - a vehicle in Revolution is simply a structure by which objects are carried and "conveyed" (where conveyance here means acted upon with resolvers/validators).

I’m sorry but I keep getting stuck on transportation metaphors with vehicle. Does the Vehicle itself do the moving, or is some other system involved? I think the case is that the Package Transport system does the actual moving of the vehicles. If that’s the case, and me being stuck on all-things-vehicle in the sense of cars for moving things around, then container may be even more accurate and a much quicker analogy to grok. I could see a dev new to the Revo platform saying without any effort involved, "So their take on a container/bundle is just like product X, only much more capable." It’s something they’re likely and comfortable with, a term they’re used to using in the context of software.

A car is a car is a car, despite ones from Ferrari being more sexy, agile and fast than a Ford Pinto of yore. And people get the distinction that different brands of cars are capable of different things despite them all be classified as cars.

Quick Experiment: for anyone that’s not been intimately involved in the development of Revo, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "vehicle"? I bet few folks immediately think of something that is involved in holding singular items and maybe(?) the instructions that go along with that. Vehicle is so ingrained in all-things-automotive that I would bet 99%+ immediately think "car". And I don’t think the car analogy holds up as well when you put it up the the constraints of what it does. (It being the current Revo definition of vehicle.)

"Vehicle" might be interpreted as our trying to be too techy/edgy/l337 just for the sake of being different than others. As BobRay mentioned elsewhere a reason why he groaned and dismissed alternatives software CMSes was in fact all the techno-mumbo-jumbo for implementations of the same broadly-related (or often closely) things. What if we never had the privilege of having Bob working in our community because we’re presenting things that could be expressed more simply?

I’m not worried about the hard-core devs getting it, but I am about more casual users, or those that want to learn and become more technically adept devs. MODx today is a neat platform to learn basic PHP coding, partially I would surmise because it’s very approachable and simple to get a grasp of quickly. If we could do the same thing for OO development with Revo, that’d be a pretty cool thing too! (Not saying we can but it is fun to think about.) We don’t have to make it harder to change ingrained thought patterns by our word choices.

Bah I meander way too much. Forgive me for the length of this post for I have not the time to write a short one. And I have to go fill up my vehicle that’s low on gas.