(controversial) Renaming "bzr" => "bz"

[Nicholas Allen]

Since all the Dvorak typers are commenting thought I would chip in too...

What I don't like about most unix commands on Dvorak is that they 
usually have no vowels and Dvorak is faster and easier to type when you 
use both hands (vowels on left, consanants on the right so you 
alternate). I find bzr a little annoying to type as I don't usually have 
to type 3 characters all using the right hand.

I would be in favour of introducing a vowel but then I guess that leaves 
you with the only choice being baz which was used by the old Bazaar and 
has nothing to do with the "NG" one.

Having said all that I am not too bothered about typing bzr. Bazaar has 
its own command shell too which can eliminate the need to type it. Also 
it would be a bit strange that bz and bz2 commands have nothing to do 
with each other.

Personally, I think bzr is ok. If users don't like that then they can 
alias it themselves or use the bzr shell...

Nick

John Arbash Meinel wrote:
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> Hi all-
> 
> A long while back it was brought up if we wanted to change the name of the
> command line program, to something that was a bit easier to type. We
> bike-shedded for a while and didn't really get anywhere. So in the end, nothing
> changed. (Partly because it was felt it wasn't really that important).
> 
> It was brought up again at our sprint in London, partially because there was
> someone who was blogging about the "simple pleasures" of typing commands which
> are easy on the fingers.
> 
> So I went ahead and aliased 'bzr' => 'bz' for the last couple weeks to give it
> a shot and see what I think of it.
> 
> Now, I'm very much the wrong person to try out this experiment because:
> 
> a) I've been typing 'bzr' for a couple years now, and it is pretty hard-coded.
> b) I have to type "vi bzrlib/*" or "cd bzrlib" a lot, so I still have to type
> 'bzr' all the time. Also the selftest is "./bzr" so it still gets typed.
> 
> But overall, I've found that I've adapted fairly well and (b) wouldn't be a
> problem if we actually changed the name. Overall, I can't say that I've noticed
> much of a difference, but point (a) is the real killer there.
> 
> I feel like these are the main points:
> 
> a) 'bz' is 2 characters instead of 3. Which is actually significant for a
> command that you type a lot. Especially something like "bz st" you can save a
> reasonable amount of finger time. Heck, on small trees typing "bz st" takes as
> long as it takes for the command to finish.
> 
> b) bz is associated with bzip2 in most peoples heads. However they really are
> associating 'bz2', so I don't think it is a hard jump. It may make searching
> for "bz" a little bit harder in google. But the project is "Bazaar"
> 
> c) I think "bz" is significantly easier to *say* than "bzr", but that isn't
> really a main point.
> 
> d) Changing names is a difficult thing, we've been going through it with
> Bazaar-NG => Bazaar, and deprecating Baz 1.x. (Trying to distance ourselves
> from it). Also, we can't have a "bz" package, so we would have to rename the
> debian/gentoo/fedora/etc packages to really be "bazaar", which requires some
> conflicts against the existing Bazaar 1.x package. However, since we really
> need to fix that up anyway, this is a good time to fix up the command name, too.
> 
> e) 'bzr' has an awkward placement of keys because the 'r' is on the top row,
> while 'bz' are on the bottom row. (Interestingly enough this is true on both
> dvorak and qwerty, just on different hands, and slightly different fingers. I
> find it slightly easier to type of dvorak because it uses 3 fingers rather than
> re-using the index finger).
> 
> 
> Overall, I think I'm in favor of the command name change, I'll probably
> continue to use the alias, and see how it goes. Though probably it would be
> better for other people to do that, and report in, since I'm not the average user.
> 
> John
> =:->
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