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Subject: Re: svn commit: r923712 - in /httpd/httpd/trunk/docs/manual: ./ mod/
From: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>
In-Reply-To: <987950801003161224i77d33393j2659571afcc844c2@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:38:27 -0700
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To: dev@httpd.apache.org

On Mar 16, 2010, at 12:24 PM, Noirin Shirley wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:05 PM, William A. Rowe Jr.
> <wrowe@rowe-clan.net> wrote:
>> On 3/16/2010 12:37 PM, Noirin Shirley wrote:
>>> 
>>> In some places, we use httpd, but that leads to some horrible
>>> confusion between the product and the command.
>> 
>> I guess I'm not seeing the disconnect.  If a reader cannot parse httpd
>> as shorthand "the Apache HTTP Server program", then we have more serious
>> issues in helping them become a web server administrator.
> 
> The problem is that httpd is used as shorthand for "the Apache HTTP
> Server" *and* as a reference to a specific binary/process/command, and
> we assume that people can work out the difference, because, y'know,
> Bill knows the difference, and Roy does, so obviously, all the rest of
> us should too.

No, they can work out the difference (assuming they ever need to)
by looking at the context.

> If the command were, say, "apache2", then just using "Apache HTTP
> Server (httpd)" for the first mention, and "httpd" thereafter would be
> fine. Heck, even if we absolutely always used "apachectl", and never
> referred to the binary directly, we might be able to get something
> that worked, although there'd be a lot more rewriting of docs
> required. But when it's not always clear to people who've been working
> on the project for years whether a given instance of "httpd" refers to
> a single binary or a set of binaries, and config files, and sometimes
> other bits and pieces, how on earth do we expect users to be able to
> grok what we're talking about?
> 
> And as for clueless lawyers, unless we've given one commit access,
> they're not the only ones using HTTPd either - cf
> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/install.html

Yes, both Joshua Slive and Ken Coar would (very rarely) capitalize
the HTTP for no apparent reason, as would various denizens of other
projects (NCSA HTTPd post-1.5, kHTTPd, OmniHTTPd, etc.).  That doesn't
make it our product name.  A patch to make everything consistently
wrong is not an improvement over being inconsistently wrong in our docs.

....Roy