change "jsmd" to "iomd"

[bcolloran]

per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19387134

changing this might end up being a big pain in the butt, b/c if we change the terminology i'd want to change the code. luckily "jsmd" is a weird enough string the a simple find/replace in all files might do the trick.

real question is: what would we want to change do, and do we think it's worth it at this point? i'm def not attached to jsmd, and if it feels like it paints us into a corner or muddies our message, we can certainly change it.

just to get the ball rolling on conversation:

easy options:

• emd or xmd -- executable markdown
• cmd -- computable markdown
• imd -- iodide md

or we could do something cutesier a la "jupytext" -- lol "iodown" (def not this, but you know what i mean)

i really care very little about this!! :-)

[hamilton]

Like the idea and I agree w/ the person that responded to my comment that we're still early so it's easy to change this now.

[hamilton]

my vote is just to call it the Iodide format. We don't need a shortened name.

[bcolloran]

i think it's nice to have a short construction to facilitate talking about jsmd --
"just copy your jsmd from your editor..." vs "just copy your iodide formatted text from your editor"

also we have a zillion places in the code where we use the string "jsmd". my hunch is that as a practical matter, if we have that string everywhere in our code and we don't have some kind of name for the format, we'll just end up defaulting to jsmd forever, because (1) i think names for things are cognitively stickier than longer constructions, even tho the construction you propose is totally valid and reasonable (2) habit -- i'm used to talking about jsmd, and if i don't have something else to call that thing/idea and i'm seeing that in the code all the time, i think i'll call it that forever...

i also think it might be useful to have a shortened we can use as a file extension -- i suspect that will become a thing we'll want at some point.

so i guess i would say that i'm in favor of having some kind of name we can use, but that i'm pretty relaxed about what that is.

[hamilton]

Yep those are good points. To add a bit of nuance / further food for thought on your comments (and because it's Friday):

(1) I guess this is ultimately just a matter of preference and experience, but I've always been able to just say "the iodide notebook format is a flat file with a special text delimiter between cells" and most people (esp. data scientists & others with experience w/ nbs) understand what I mean at a high-level enough to buy into the idea, so the shorthand doesn't get in the way and it feels less like some new format proposal. I'm sensitive to people immediately responding "oh great another file format! why do we need that?" when that's not really part of our story - the flatness of an iodide notebook IS the important part, not the shorthand we use for it. From a basic branding POV I think I'm just more in line with how Jupyter does this, eg "Jupyter Notebooks" and the "Jupyter notebook file format" or whatever. I can't speak to habit as you mentioned, but I hear your point there, I just don't see the need for the shorthand personally and it kind of muddies the waters. Probably wouldn't have thought of this unless someone hadn't brought it up on HN, to be fair.
(2) re: codebase, this is coincidentally something that's been on my mental back-burner for a month or so, but I have been wondering if we should change the jsmd as the key in the state for clarity's sake anyway. specifically, I was thinking that jsmd => editorBuffer, jsmdChunks => editorBufferChunks or whatever, would work fine (which brings it more in-line with how we treat the console, semantically - you have a console and and editor in the iodide codebase). Perhaps that'll open a can of worms we'd rather keep neatly sealed, though, but I think it is much clearer and more functional. Kind of orthogonal from the point at hand.

At any rate I get that this is verrrrrrry bike-sheddy, just wanted to expand on my personal pref a bit more. I will be happy & supportive with whatever the team thinks is the right way forward.

[wlach]

GitHub's "github flavored markdown" (gfm) went over pretty well as far as I know:

https://github.github.com/gfm/

I don't have strong opinions about what the acronym should be, but I think it makes sense to have "iodide" in the name. Just to make it clear it's a format specific to iodide and not an implementation of an open standard.

[bcolloran]

"iomd", "iodoc"

[rumkin]

I see here a general purpose text container and a particular set of languages over it. The first is a multiple markup container/document (like TAR). And I'm sure it will be used outside of Iodide. The second is Iodide's own set of languages and flags. This set should has a clear project's related name to avoid confusion and misusing. The text container could has more general/abstract name.

[bcolloran]

@hamilton @wlach @mdboom @teonbrooks

I hereby formally propose that we switch to "iomd". @hamilton thank you for your thoughtful comments on the matter. in the end, i think it will continue to be handy to have a conceptual and written shorthand by which to grab this complex of ideas.

I'm also happy to just do nothing and stick with "jsmd" if we want to ignore the objection raised by that person from hacker news. but let's make a decision:
"iomd" or "jsmd"?
cast your votes!! :-)

(your votes are welcome too @robhudson @rafrombrc @openjck, but this is um rather quite trivial, so feel free to have no opinion!)

[openjck]

I vote for iomd. It has a nice ring to it. 🤷‍♂

[wlach]

Yup, iomd sounds good to me.

[mdboom]

Yep. The "branding" ties in better...

…

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 12:42 PM William Lachance ***@***.***> wrote: Yup, iomd sounds good to me. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1634?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAAJLFTFXR4WICXKUHYGPEDPVLTXDA5CNFSM4G6XUCH2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGODVMCKSA#issuecomment-492315976>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAJLFWQXUYAQM2R2US65S3PVLTXDANCNFSM4G6XUCHQ> .

-- Michael Droettboom Data Engineer Mozilla Corporation

[teonbrooks]

iomd sounds great. xmd is also good

[bcolloran]

ok, the proposal is hereby accepted. i will update the issue name and tag it as a "good first issue" in case someone want to take it up.

[bcolloran]

task to be done: change all instances of "jsmd" to "iomd" everywhere in the repo (docs, code, etc). a few big global search and replace operations, one for each of various case permutations (at least "jsmd", "Jsmd")

[wlach]

task to be done: change all instances of "jsmd" to "iomd" everywhere in the repo (docs, code, etc). a few big global search and replace operations, one for each of various case permutations (at least "jsmd", "Jsmd")

Please do not work on this before I've landed #1812, otherwise I'm going to spend hours fixing merge conflicts. I'm going to untag this as a good first issue for now.

[bcolloran]

sounds good @wlach

[wlach]

I think I'm just going to take this one, as these large-scale refactors tend not to work well as good first bugs IME

[bcolloran]

thanks for handling this will :-) now the hard work of changing habit begins...