Keep in mind that chromatic, like me, writes for at least part of his living, and is also a technical editor at least part of the time (like me). We have a different level of sensitivity about agreed-upon spellings and terminologies as a natural result of our attempt to make many different writers look consistent.

I suspect that chromatic and the O'Reilly staff have already created some style guidelines for books about Perl 6, and somewhere on this list it says "Perl 6, not Perl6". While this may appear arbitary to some, it will nevertheless define the way that all official texts from O'Reilly will appear. And dare I say, as O'Reilly goes, so goes the community. {grin}

The whole distinction between "perl" and "Perl" was a similar declaration on my part during the writing of the initial Camel. I told Larry that the name of the language "disappears" when it is in the middle of the sentence, and we agreed that we could call the language Perl, and the interpreter perl (in a constant font), so that neither of them would disappear in text.

Was this completely justified in an absolute sense? Not really. It's a style decision for typographical reasons, but it also defined how an entire generation of people spelled both.

So, ease up on chromatic. He's probably quoting chapter and verse of a style guide that has been defined and agreed upon. Because of that, it'll also be how every "official" doc appears, and if you write it differently, people may understand what you mean, but they'll wonder why you're typing it differently.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

In reply to Re: Another day, another nit by merlyn
in thread Another day, another nit by hv

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