Re: Postgres vs. PostgreSQL

On Tue, 11 Apr 2000, Thomas Lockhart wrote:

> The document conventions are mentioned in the introductory section on
> "Notation".

I am aware of that but I interpreted it as "You should read all occurences
of 'Postgres' as 'PostgreSQL' because I haven't finished changing them
yet."

> I'm trying for a consistant presentation within the documents,

IMHO, it would be much better if the documentation was actually consistent
with the software package it is describing, which is definitely called
PostgreSQL, comes in a postgresql-7.x.x.tar.gz file, has a web site at
www.postgresql.org, and commercial support from PostgreSQL, Inc., owners
of the PostgreSQL trademark.

> and had settled on "Postgres" as a readable, pronounceable form for
> our project.

Considering that there is up to this day no terminally universal way to
pronounce 'Linux' (unless you know Swedish :), I don't think that's worth
worrying about. Personally, I find PostgreSQL very pronouncable though.

> I try to keep "PostgreSQL" for introductory sections and book and
> chapter headings.

... more inconsistencies ... :(

> I suppose that those conventions could be up for discussion (as is
> everything else wrt Postgres^HSQL) but I'm not sure that changing this
> particular convention buys us anything other than heavier docs.

If "heavy" means more complicated then I disagree. If "heavy" means
larger, then you can define an entity &pgsql; as
'<productname>PostgreSQL</productname>'. ;)

> To my mind, this s/w is the only survivor of the Postgres family, and
> there is no need to distinguish it from other, older, relatives.

Postgres was a different product. Continuing to mention it might confuse
users. PostgreSQL is a new and improved product and it has SQL as its
query language. I don't know what went on when the name was chosen but
that's long gone and now it should be used.

FreeBSD documentation does talk about 'FreeBSD' and not 'BSD', 'Unix', or
'operating system', and it will continue to do so even if its siblings in
various categories were to cease. And 'FreeBSD' is equally unreadable and
unpronouncable as 'PostgreSQL'. :)

It's not a big deal but I just don't think that *enforcing* "Postgres" in
(parts of) the docs when it's not used anywhere else is reasonable.


--
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115
peter_e@gmx.net                   75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/            Sweden