The name is easier to distinguish for Americans, I think, who pronounce the letter "Z" differently from the character "S". I'm pretty sure Brits don't do this, but I could be wrong. Nevertheless, the verbal resemblance between "Zope" and "soap" is still pretty high. I once spoke with an American about a particular zoological garden and somewhat into my discourse he stopped me to ask what the heck I was talking about and who this "Sue" was. Same thing recently with Zope, and this American wondered, incredulously, how we could develop anything with soap. I've since seen the errors of my ways and I hand out Zs less casually these days. Zope isn't a great name, but great names in the computing business is the exception, not the rule. Names are but placeholders for our associative memory: Delphi, Photoshop, Visual C++, Linux, GNOME, KDE, Cold Fusion -- they're all pretty inane. Few describe the product; some (Visual C++) are just plain wrong. One my favourite product names is Maya (the high-end 3D modeling tool from Alias|Wavefront), which has connotations to ancient architecture and the building craft. Such names are few and far between. Extraordinarily few names truly convey anything by themselves. For example, Photoshop, to me, conveys professionalism, stability, speed, and so on -- but that's because these are qualities of the product, not the name. If the opposite were true, all product names would be things like ProfessionalStableFastImageEditingProgram. The poorest names in the business are those which strive that kind of descriptive verbosity (be on the lookout for words such as "super" or "ultra" or "plus"). Ultimately any name may be redefined. I wouldn't matter an iota to me if Photoshop were called Dung. Companies would still buy it based on its quality. Nobody buys a product based on its name alone, especially not relatively unknown products. As others have pointed out, "Zope" lends itself to the unsearchable mess we call the world wide web. That's good. It's short, syntactically unique in the English language, easily pronouncable, and so on. That's good, too. Personally I'd be even happier if DC would forgo the acronymic baggage. "Zope" is silly enough by itself; it doesn't have to be shorthand for "Z Object Publishing Environment", too. Having to "explain" it only serves to dampen its effect. So while we likely all agree that Zope isn't brilliant or even that good, it doesn't really matter. And I'll have a Zope-on-a-Rope to go, please. -- Alexander Staubo http://www.mop.no/~alex/ "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." --Carl Sagan
-----Original Message----- From: Jay, Dylan [mailto:djay@lucent.com] Sent: 15. oktober 1999 03:26 To: 'Rafael Cordones Marcos'; Brian Lloyd Cc: Users of the Z Object Publishing Environment Subject: [Zope] The name ZOPE (was RE: [Zope] Linux.com community ad)
-----Original Message----- From: Rafael Cordones Marcos [mailto:rcm@bcnartdirecte.com] Sent: Friday, October 15, 1999 04:41 To: Brian Lloyd Cc: Users of the Z Object Publishing Environment Subject: Re: [Zope] Linux.com community ad
On Thu, Oct 14, 1999 at 01:42:31PM -0400, Brian Lloyd wrote:
Michael, you are resourceful enough to make such a banner, aren't you?
Ok, I'll play. How about this one? :^)
These just came up:
- The web is made for Zopping. - Zope: the web with a Zertain Class. - Zope: work the web with class. - Zope: work the web with classes. - Zope makes the Web go round. (or is it "arround"?) - To Zope or not to Zope... that ain't a question!
NOTE: As English is not my mother tongue, thess phrases might have the wrong meaning for me. Feel free to modify them! ;)
I seem to be the one that rains on a lot of parades but I thought this was the time to bring up something thats been bothering me for awhile. The name ZOPE. In my opinion its not very good. It doesn't convey the sense of an enterprise object oriented web publishing system. It sounds silly. Zope as in Soap. Zope on a Rope. People look at me strange when I say I've been working with Zope. I think Z Object Publishing Environment is fine but thats not a name its a description. I personally think it needs a name that suggests the power, stability and flexibility that is Zope.
Am I alone in this thought?
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