Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling?

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Re: Does ORA Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on Oct 05, 2004 at 21:26 UTC
It's not a "Powered by" logo, it's a "POWERED BY" logo. All of the letters are uppercase. The circular logo also uses only uppercase letters. This problem was rampant well before those logos appeared. A lot of people still call the computers that Apple makes "MAC". I think they just want everything to be an initialization or acronym (like "ORA", which is really now just O'Reilly Media :). -- brian d foy <bdfoy@cpan.org>	[reply]
Re: Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by itub (Priest) on Oct 06, 2004 at 03:08 UTC
I think another reason is the old-fashioned tendency to write the names of all programming languages (and even programs) in all caps. I've seen FORTRAN, LISP, BASIC, PASCAL, PERL, COBOL, ADA, JAVA, PHP, etc. This might be because very old computers worked that way, or because many of these names really are abbreviations, but now most of these languages are more commonly writen in lowercase (or capitalizing the first letter only).	[reply]
Re^2: Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by Anonymous Monk on Oct 06, 2004 at 11:01 UTC
Yeah, it took me years to get used to not writing C in all caps anymore, but only in leading uppercase.	[reply]
Re^2: Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by CountZero (Bishop) on Oct 06, 2004 at 19:06 UTC
Back in the days when computers were fed punched cards, I don't think there was a difference between upper- and lowercase. CountZero "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law	[reply]
Re^3: Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by TheEnigma (Pilgrim) on Oct 06, 2004 at 19:46 UTC
Yeah, as I recall, the old teletypes only had uppercase. I don't know if it's true, but the story I heard years later was that they could only use upper or lower case, for whatever reason. The engineers wanted to use lower because it's easier to read. The president, (or somebody with the final say) said if there's a choice, it has to be upper; otherwise "GOD" could not be spelled with a capital G. Kind of sounds like a myth, but still a good story :) TheEnigma	[reply]
Re^4: Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by revdiablo (Prior) on Oct 08, 2004 at 17:08 UTC
Re: Does ORA Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Oct 05, 2004 at 19:12 UTC
As I understand it, trademarks require uppercase designations.	[reply]
Re: Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by zentara (Cardinal) on Oct 06, 2004 at 13:20 UTC
"At first, I thought this idea was silly." Isn't this a case where "confusion" serves a useful purpose? Since anybody who has studied Perl, (or even posted a few times in a newsgroup :-) ), quickly learns the correct spelling. So a person can use this fact as a way to "discern" the knowledge level of the writer. Sort of a "tell-tale clue". I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh	[reply]
Re: Does ORA Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by poqui (Deacon) on Oct 05, 2004 at 21:27 UTC
For me, the most compelling reason to mis-capitalize Perl is the persistent rumor that it is an acronym. So, yes, I think the ORA logo contributes to that misunderstanding.	[reply]
Re^2: Do ORA's Perl logos contribute to common misspelling? by jacques (Priest) on Oct 05, 2004 at 22:48 UTC
the persistent rumor that it is an acronym. I think this is the biggest reason. Most introductions to Perl begin by reciting the famous acronyms that start with "Practical ..." and "Pathetically ..." Perhaps the next Camel should dedicate an entire chapter on the spelling of Perl to clear up matters.	[reply]