[SciPy-User] Naming Ideas

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Thomas Kluyver <takowl at gmail.com>Hi, wrote:
>> On 4 September 2012 03:14, The Helmbolds <helmrp at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> If there is a need for a name that includes more than just SciPy, then I
>>> suggest we consider something like the following:
>>> MatSysPy, pronounced  "mat-sis-pie".
>>
>> Thanks, I guess you're referring to my recent thread about making a
>> unified 'brand' for the scipy ecosystem? I agree that picking a good
>> name is important
>>
>> To recap, names suggested so far:
>>
>> Sciome - from the numfocus proposal (potential confusion with sciome.com)
>> PyScis - pronounced like pisces (potential confusion with PySCeS and
>> PySci, two unrelated Python projects)
>> Scipy-base
>> Unipy
>> MatSysPy
>> Pyengine
>> Pycraft
>>
>> List subscribers, what do you think? Does one of those names feel
>> right to refer to the scipy/numpy/etc. stack? Would you like to rule
>> any out? Or can you think of a better name yourself?
>
> I said something similar in the numfocus thread, but I'll throw it out again:
>
> The only name that people seem to actually like for this is "PyLab".
> Of course the problem is that people liked it enough that it has
> existing usages (matplotlib.pylab, ipython -pylab, etc.) that AFAICT
> are now considered to be poorly put together and deprecated. But the
> actual meaning has always been pretty much what we're looking for
> here, and it has existing name recognition. Maybe we'd be better off
> figuring out how to clean up the existing mess around this name
> instead of trying to start something new. (This also would have the
> advantage -- or disadvantage -- that it would require concrete tasks
> instead of just bikeshedding on the mailing list ;-).)

Well - bikeshedding means putting a disproportionate amount of effort
into something that is not important.  Is the name not important?

pylab seems like a good choice to me, and maybe it's an advantage to
lose 'pylab' from the matplotlib namespace, it could be confusing.

Best,

Matthew