Re: GNOME vs. Gnome

[Pat Costello - Sun ireland - Desktop Systems - Tech writer <Patrick Costello ireland sun com>]

Hello Gnomes, 

If I haven't been in touch with any of you yet, my name is Pat Costello, one of 
the contributors to the Gnome Documentation Project on behalf of Sun 
Microsystems. My two euros worth (which is a lot less than two cents these days) 
is that we should use Gnome, initial cap plus rest lower case. My reasoning is 
as follows: 

- Common usage defines standard usage defines correct usage. If the press, 
especially the technical and trade press are using Gnome, then GNOME sticks out 
like a sore THUMB. And, eventually, GNOME will be perceived by all and sundry as 
plain, old-fashioned wrong. We should anticipate and indeed establish the trend, 
not defend a technically-correct but untenable position. 

- The desktop is deliberately associated with small, hairy proto-men of 
indeterminate age and habits, witness the footprint icon in the Panel. This is 
not the footprint of a GNOME, is it? We are implicitly using Gnome as a concept 
for the desktop, and hence as a real word, rather than an acronym, whenever we 
use the footprint icon. 

- Following on from the above reasoning, we are also using Gnome as a real-world 
adjective when we talk about Gnome applications, or Gnome icons, or Gnome 
anything. Gnome, as both a word and concept, has grown in stature. We should 
welcome Gnome as such and afford it the trappings of maturity, leaving behind 
its acronymonic genesis. 

- As previous correspondents pointed out English has a recognized tendency to 
upgrade cobbled-together words, whether hyphenated (e-mail) or created from 
acronyms (LASER), into standalone words obeying normal grammer rules. There are 
of course exceptions, where the word remains acronymified and uppercased 
indefinitely. In these cases, however, I would suggest that there are usually 
overriding technical or political reasons why the transition has not taken 
place, for example the user needs to be regularly reminded about the underlying 
acronym definition, witness SCSI, or RAM, or OPEC for that matter. Forget the 
underlying meaning of OPEC at your own peril, oh ye gas-guzzlers of the world! 
There is no need for users to remember the underlying meaning of the original 
GNOME acronym, therefore the way is clear for a smooth and inevitable transition 
to Gnome, as predicated by the inexorable, and wholly unstopple workings of the 
English language. Let's recognize that transition and establish our convention 
accordingly. 

Quad erat demonstrandum...

All the best, 

Pat