Re: Lets avoid the SHA-1 term (was [doc] User Manual Suggestion)

["Björn Steinbrink" <B.Steinbrink@gmx.de>]

On 2009.04.27 02:38:40 +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> 2009/4/27 Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@gmx.de>:
> > On 2009.04.24 20:48:57 -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
> >>
> >> On Apr 24, 2009, at 8:01 PM, Michael Witten wrote:
> >>
> >>>> What's wrong with just calling the object name "object name"?
> >>>
> >>> What's wrong with calling the object address "object address"?
> >>
> >> Neither captures the connection to the object's contents.  I think
> >> "value ID" would be closer, but it's probably too horrible.
> >
> > I think I asked this in another mail, but I'm quite tired, so just to
> > make sure: What do you mean by "value"? I might be weird (I'm not a
> > native speaker, so I probably make funny and wrong connotations from
> > time to time), but while I can accept "content" to include the type and
> > size of the object, the term "value" makes me want to exclude those
> > pieces of meta data. So "value" somehow feels wrong to me, as the hash
> > covers those two fields.
> 
> Just to summarize.
> 
> Do you agree that SHA-1 is not the proper term to choose?

Yes, IMHO that's too strongly tied to the implementation. But a quick
grep run tells me that the "object name" area is probably not where you
need to get rid of that. The "object name" term is already used a lot.
If you want to ban SHA-1 then the rev-parse man page, describing the
"extended SHA1 syntax" would probably be a better place to start (unless
you want to "fix" everything at once).

> Do you agree that either 'id' or 'hash' would work fine?

"object id" would work for me, but I'm fine with the existing "object
name" as well. I don't like "object hash" (or "object hash id"), because
it IMHO doesn't express that well that it's used to identify an object.

> Personally I think there's an advantage of choosing 'hash'; if we pick
> 'id' then the user might think that he can change the contents of the
> object while keeping the same id, if we pick 'hash' then it's obvious
> the 'id' is tied to the content and why.

Heh, if you use "hash", there's no "id" tied to the content, there's
just the hash. SCNR ;-) See my other mails why I think that "hash" isn't
that advantageous.

Björn