[SciPy-User] Naming Ideas

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:48 AM, Brennan Williams
<brennan.williams at visualreservoir.com> wrote:
> On 6/09/2012 9:34 p.m., Robert Kern wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Andrew Jaffe <a.h.jaffe at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 05/09/2012 17:27, Jason Grout wrote:
>>>> What about just expanding the SciPy name brand?  SciPy captures the
>>>> essence, I think---a scientific python software suite.  It's easy to say
>>>> and already has a lot of name recognition (though that also might be a
>>>> negative).
>>>>
>>>> Just thought I'd throw that out there.  Other than that, pylab is my
>>>> favorite, for what it's worth.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> Jason
>>>>
>>> +1 -- It seems obviously the most appropriate name. I don't think it
>>> would be any more confusing to the community than re-purposing "pylab".
>>> But of course it does raise the question of what to call the current
>>> "scipy" in that case.
>> For what it's worth, "SciPy" already *is* repurposed to refer to the
>> broader project of encouraging Python in the sciences. The fact that
>> no one knows this anymore should tell you exactly how well it's worked
>> out. For example:
>>
>> http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/2009-August/012475.html
>>
> +1 to SciPy.
> I'm coming from an engineering view rather than a sciences view but this
> all has a sort of university feel to me, i.e. "sciences" vs "arts" where
> sciences could mean anything from physics to chemistry, marine biology
> etc etc and arts was history, english etc.
>
> So for me SciPy is already a broad name encompassing a number of
> domains/disciplines.

We have a package called 'nipy' and an umbrella project called 'nipy'
that includes the package 'nipy'.   As in Robert's email, we find
ourselves writing nipy-the-package and nipy-the-community .  If the
name makes you stop and wonder what person means, that's a strong vote
against the name, in my view.

In the case of pylab, there is no 'pylab' package - there is (mainly)
a pylab module that is part of the matplotlib package.   So, like
others here, it seems to me that there would not be much 'which one do
you mean?' going on if we repurpose 'pylab'.

Cheers,

Matthew