[Nipy-devel] How to capitalize NIPY?

[Karl Young]

except of course for the elephant in the room, SciPy

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>pyNI? or pini
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>eg, pyOpenGL, pyVTK, py* for most python packages.
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>Jarrod Millman wrote:
>  
>
>>!!WARNING!!
>>The following is pedantic.  Sorry.
>>!!ENDWARNING!!
>>
>>Hey,
>>
>>Given the amount of time I spend writing about NIPY (mostly grants), I
>>can't help but think about how we should capitalize the letters of the
>>acronym.  I tend to write NIPY with all capital letters, but I think
>>almost everyone else writes NiPy using camelcase capitalization.  I
>>will try and make my case and if you aren't convinced, I will start
>>using NiPy as well.
>>
>>1. Most wikis recognize NiPy as a wiki word.  This leads to a
>>proliferation of webpages (or at least potential pages that someone
>>may feel compelled to populate).  On our trac site we have:
>>http://projects.scipy.org/neuroimaging/ni/wiki
>>http://projects.scipy.org/neuroimaging/ni/wiki/AboutNiPy
>>http://projects.scipy.org/neuroimaging/ni/wiki/NiPy
>>All 3 pages could potentially contain the same content.  We can get
>>rid of the AboutNiPy page, which leaves us with 2 pages.  We will have
>>at least 2 such pages on the user's site when we switch to moinmoin.
>>Then if anyone mentions NiPy in a ticket on NumPy or SciPy, we will
>>have wikiwords on both those sites.  Moreover, any lab or imaging
>>center that has a wiki will potentially create additional wikiwords.
>>Either we will get a bunch of different pages saying what NiPy is or
>>we get a bunch of ugly broken links.  I know we could ask everyone to
>>write !NiPy so as to avoid it being rendered as a wiki word; but it is
>>not reasonable to expect everyone who writes wiki content to always
>>remember to prepend the '!'.
>>
>>2. Style guides are, as far as I can tell, agree that we should either
>>capitalize all letters or only the 1st letter of acronyms.  US guides
>>tend toward capitalizing all the letters; while, British guides
>>recommend to only capitalize the first letter if you pronounce the
>>word rather than saying each letter.  So if we follow the conventions
>>dictated by the style guides we should write NIPY or Nipy.  I know
>>that NumPy, SciPy, fMRI are all notable counter-examples.  Personally,
>>I prefer using FMRI to fMRI.
>>
>>3. Most style guides recommend against CamelCase; although advertisers
>>and programmers are making the practice more fashionable.  CamelCase
>>is usually used when the acronym is a contraction (e.g., the journal
>>NeuroImage).  In the case of SciPy and NumPy, the 'Sci' and 'Num' are
>>obvious contractions of science and numeric.  In the case of NiPy,
>>'Ni' isn't a cotraction of anything and doesn't seem particularly
>>evocative of anything.  I am sure some of you may appreciate the nod
>>to the Knights of Ni; but I would prefer not to emphasize the
>>reference.
>>
>>4.  Personally, I think that NIPY just looks better than NiPy.  For
>>instance, the banners on both the user's and developer's sites use
>>NIPY and I think they look reasonably nice.
>>
>>Please let me know if i should switch to using NiPy for consistency or
>>if you would prefer to use NIPY.  I think that the first point above
>>is the most compelling; but I think that rather practical point is
>>nicely reinforced by the fact that it is also more standard practice
>>to write NIPY.
>>
>>Thanks for reading this far and I promise to not bring up what we call
>>the project of how we spell or capitalize it again.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>- --
>
>Darren L. Weber, Ph.D.
>Postdoctoral Scholar
>
>Dynamic Neuroimaging Laboratory,
>UCSF Department of Radiology,
>185 Berry Street, Suite 350, Box 0946,
>San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.
>
>Tel: +1 415 353-9444
>Fax: +1 415 353-9421
>www: http://dnl.ucsf.edu/users/dweber
>pgp: http://dnl.ucsf.edu/users/dweber/dweber_pgp.html
>
>"To explicate the uses of the brain seems as difficult
>a task as to paint the soul, of which it is commonly
>said, that it understands all things but itself."
>  Thomas Willis (The Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves, 1664)
>
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-- 

Karl Young
Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases, UCSF          
VA Medical Center (114M)              Phone:  (415) 221-4810 x3114  lab        
4150 Clement Street                   FAX:    (415) 668-2864
San Francisco, CA 94121               Email:  karl young at ucsf edu