Fwd: Suitable new name for Dimensional library

[Björn Buckwalter]

On 9/28/07, Henning Thielemann <lemming at henning-thielemann.de> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 27 Sep 2007, Björn Buckwalter wrote:
>
> > Secondly, I feel that "Dimensional" is to vague and ambiguous, in
> > particular it could just as well refer to dimensions in the linear
> > algebra sense as physical dimensions. I'd like a more specific and
> > perhaps less pretentious name for the library. This is where I would
> > appreciate some feedback as to what would be appropriate. Some
> > suggestions are:
> >
> >  - Numeric.Units
> >  - Numeric.PhysicalUnits
> >  - Numeric.PhysicalDimensions
> >  - Numeric.SI
> >  - Numeric.SIUnits
> >  - Numeric.Units.Static
>
> It's certainly a good idea to distinguish between static and dynamic
> implementations. Incidentally, my implementation of numbers with units
> uses dynamic unit checking. It is also implemented in a generic way for
> any unit system, but has a specialisation for SI units. Currently it does
> not adhere to standard top-level module names (which are these and why?)
> but this could be changed.

>From the wiki[1] it appears there is no standard, only three proposals
(which all have 'Numeric' at the top-level).

[1] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Applications_and_libraries#Guidelines_for_developers


> I use:
>
> Number/Physical.hs
> Number/Physical/Read.hs
> Number/Physical/Show.hs
> Number/Physical/Unit.hs
> Number/Physical/UnitDatabase.hs
> Number/SI.hs
> Number/SI/Unit.hs
>
> To be compatible with your library, the module names should contain some
> hint to their dynamic nature.

And conversely by this argument my module names should contain some
hint to their static nature, under the assumption that you (or
somewhen else) will eventually move a "dynamic" unit library to the
'Numeric' namespace. A suitable namespace would be
'Numeric.Units.Static'.

Taken further though, if someone develops another "static" unit
library where should they put it? An arbitrarily complex tree of
namespaces could be built trying to distinguish libraries to
anticipate future clashes.

This leads me to wonder -- is it better for a library to have a more
or less arbitrary differentiating name rather than a descriptive name?
Examples are 'Text.ParserCombinators.Parsec', 'Text.Parsers.Frisby'.
>From their names it's not obvious what distinguishes them from other
parsers in the same namespace but at least the tree is fairly flat and
hopefully narrowed down enough to permit investigating each
alternative. In the units case I imagine
'Numeric.Units.SomethingArbitrary' would be appropriate.

As counterexamples I also notice there are cases where a library has a
unique name but still a very generic namespace, e.g. Takusen which
uses 'Database', Haifa with among other 'Text.XML.Serializer'.

Then there is HAppS which at a cursory glance appears to use 'HAppS'
as its top-level namespace, which has the obvious advantage of not
having to worry about other libraries in the same namespace while also
keeping the rather broad HAppS code collected in one place.

Comments on what is appropriate (for my case, not necessarily for all
cases)? I'm still leaning towards 'Numeric.Units' or something
thereunder.

Thanks,
Bjorn