Settle on a better package name

[ebertin]

Please give us suggestions for a better new package name (or use thumbs up/down for existing suggestions). We will likely end this by Oct 11.
Thank you.

[kirxkirx]

How about the simple "New Source Extractor", command line nse?

[pllim]

source_extractor_plus?

[crosstrainor]

Source Extractor: the Next Generation (seng)

[reneehlozek]

SourceX (easy to remember: like SpaceX, but for sources)

[thriveth]

@crosstrainor That means "bed" in Danish and Norwegian so might involuntarily play into the old problem...

[thriveth]

Source Extractor spelled out, change the executable to sox.

[pontoppi]

Detect-And-Extract - DAX/dax?

[martinkilbinger]

SOftware Formerly known As Sextractor - SOFAS

[olebole]

SOFAS

Is IMO too close to IAU SOFA.

[brianv0]

xource

[jbochanski]

SourcePy

[overzier]

Sourcerer

[Astrokiwi]

To go with DS9, find a contrived way to spell ST:TNG. Like "Source exTractor: The Name is Good" I dunno

[teake]

We just finished an extended discussion on conda-forge about the naming of the SExtractor conda-forge package. In the end we settled on astromatic-source-extractor (the astromatic- prefix is for name-collision purposes).

There is momentum to make synchronised name changes for other distros (Ubuntu, Debian, possibly more) as well; see the comment here.

So in that light I would like to propose source-extractor-xx.

[thriveth]

So in that light I would like to propose source-extractor-xx.

That sounds like a brilliant idea to me - moving out of the dubious innuendos but disrupt the general naming scheme minimally, not preserving recognizability. I'm a fan.

[thriveth]

SourceX (easy to remember: like SpaceX, but for sources)

I do not think leaning so heavily on a well known corporate brand is a good idea. (Exacerbated by the fact that this well known corporate brand has a history of being disruptive to and dismissive of the Astronomy community with its Starlink satellite swarm).

[mikewerth1]

From the manual, "SExtractor (Source-Extractor) is a program that builds a catalog of objects from an astronomical image."

Call it AstroExtractor - commandline becomes ax

[olebole]

commandline becomes ax

Please don't use program names that are so short. The command line namespace is limited, and short names very often they clash with some other names, which creates a lot of headaches for us package maintainers, and we have to rename them in the distribution (I wear the Debian hat).
Also, writing out the full name may require a few more keypresses, but improves the readability of the script.
Same for sox, seng, nse etc. that were proposed here.
If you like to shorten, you can always start your script with alias ax=AstroExtractor, much like people usually write import numpy as np on top of their Python programs.

[marcschefer]

Thank you all for the suggestions so far!

I thought it might be better to clarify what need concretely.

Our project name should ideally reflect our origin in the current SExtractor package while also clearly indicating that it's a new project and not just an incremental version. This is why we originally went with SExtractor++ to indicate the C++ rewrite.

For the github name, we have some limitations in the characters allowed, in particular we can't actually use ++ which caused some misunderstandings.

Also please note that while using hyphens is fine for github and package names, they can't be used by our build framework and are not valid in C++ identifiers, so we'll need to adapt them (probably using camel case or underscores internally)

We also need an executable name, currently it's 'sextractor++' in full, we originally had it capitalized as the project but that wasn't convenient, so ideally something similar in length and all lower case would be best.

[justquick]

Try just adding a dash: se-extractorxx

This is exactly what the site "Experts Exchange" did with their domain name in like 2012

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experts-Exchange#History

Originally, Experts Exchange could be reached by visiting expertsexchange.com, which can be read as "Expert Sex Change".

[BrunoSanchez]

"Astromatic's New Source Extractor Plus Plus", or for the executable ansepp.

[heatherflew]

Please consider extending the deadline for names - I have submitted this as a newsletter item for the AASWomen newsletter, so it should appear in an email/blog post on Friday Oct 11. Thank you!

[michaelhfwilkinson]

Sourcerer

We presented our Sourcerer package (also for source extraction) at the IAU Symposium 355 in Tenerife, as an improvement over the (badly named) MTObjects code we published previously, so renaming sextractor++ sourcerer would cause confusion

[ebertin]

@heatherflew sure, no problem!
Thank you.

[gmloose]

What about SourceTractor, the contraction of source and extractor.

[maray]

I think SourceTractor is a good idea. It sounds very very similar, without the funny word, and it sounds powerful. I will recommend not adding the ++, because that C++ code could be just a library of the python interface that probably most of the people will use.

Best luck with the package!

[mtewes]

Note the similarity of SourceTractor to the Tractor, a project for "astronomical source detection, separation, and photometry" by David Hogg and Dustin Lang.

[martinberoiz]

My vote goest to SourceTractor, it's reminiscent of SExtractor but all new.

[vdelapparent]

How about seatractor for "Source Extraction Analysis Tractor"? It keeps the sound and rhythm of sextractor, alludes to the sea (metaphor for the sky background) and tractor can be thought as alluding to the automatism of the software...

[marcschefer]

"Detextractor" as a portmanteau of detection and extractor

[ebertin]

Thanks to all who participated! It seems that the most popular proposition is @reneehlozek 's SourceX . Unfortunately SourceX happens to be the name of a pre-existing (commercial) software package, which of course is an issue.
So we propose instead SourceXtractor++. The executable would be called sourcextractor++.
The ++ is not the most convenient, but it is useful to distinguish it from the previous package.
Unless the new name faces strong disapproval I propose we close this issue.

[marcschefer]

Since there were no objections, we have started the renaming process. It will take some time to propagate the change everywhere. I'm closing this issue for now.