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Gnuplot is not GNU
- savant2 5y agoFunnily they refer to some people wrongly using "Gnuplot" instead of "gnuplot" yet they use "Gnuplot" 23 times in this FAQ.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wartijn_ 5y agoBut only because it's the fist word of a sentence all those times.
- bravura 5y ago“ 1.1 What is gnuplot ? gnuplot is a command-driven plotting program. It can be used interactively to plot functions and data points in both two- and three-dimensional plots in many different styles and many different output formats. Gnuplot can also be used as a scripting language to automate generation of plots. It is designed primarily for the visual display of scientific data. gnuplot is copyrighted, but freely distributable; you don’t have to pay for it. You are welcome to download the source code.” If it’s lowercase in title font, it should be lowercase everywhere.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> “ 1.1 What is gnuplot ? > If it’s lowercase in title font, it should be lowercase everywhere. If you read closely, you’ll notice that only “x” level headings use title case, “x.y” level headings use sentence case; there is no clear instance of “gnuplot”, capitalized or not, in title case anywhere in the document. The only arguable case is the page header “gnuplot FAQ”, but since it is sui generis there is no way other than inferring from capitalization in the rest of the document of telling whether its titlecase or just the preferred labelling of the product followed by “FAQ” (and the context suggests the latter).
- ezequiel-garzon 5y agoDid you read this part? You see people use "Gnuplot" quite a bit because many of us have an aversion to starting a sentence with a lower case letter, even in the case of proper nouns and titles. gnuplot is not […] Most of us don’t care about forcing the first letter to be always lowercase, and in fact feel it’s a lost cause. But I agree that after such an explicit clarification I would expect to see “gnuplot” everywhere in the official documentation, except for this particular excerpt and when they refer to “GNUplot”. Otherwise it is clearly inconsistent with what they are explaining.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Did you read this part? Yes, I also read the body text after the numbered heading in the prior excerpt, which makes two different choices in sentence-starting position in sentence case. But what I was responding to was the inference of a rule bases on usage in “title font” (which seems to be a reference to title case), not a complaint about the inconsistent use in sentence case. Hence, the except you provide here isn't really germane to anything I've said.
- bonoboTP 5y agoThey very correctly mix it to show that it does not matter. Better make some plots then bikeshed this to death.
- bravura 5y agoIf you look at the quotation, they mix capitalization in the body text.
- kergonath 5y ago> If it’s lowercase in title font, it should be lowercase everywhere. The section titles are in sentence case, not title case. You would not expect it to be capitalised unless it were the first word of the title. The inconsistency in that paragraph is in the first sentence.
- proto-n 5y agoTo be fair, they mostly advise against GNUplot, and mention Gnuplot because of the aversion to start sentences with lowercase (which is also where they use it with uppercase).
- iso1210 5y agoDoesn't explain 8.4 Why does gnuplot ignore my very small numbers? For some purposes Gnuplot treats numbers less than 1e-08 as being zero....
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- swiley 5y agoI always refer to the GNU one as "GNUPlotutils."
- andix 5y agoBecause it's the correct way to spell it. Names are spelled with an uppercase letter in the beginning and all the other letters are lowercase. "I saw John" vs. "I saw john" vs. "I saw JOHN". First one is correct. Even if John tells you "My name is spelled with a lower case j". Or if John writes: "this orange thing is a kaRROT", it's still a carrot. You can write whatever you want. You can also write "Tis is me bunni and he likes KArRoTs" and have a lot of friends agree with you that's the correct spelling. And it is still generally considered wrong :)
- usrusr 5y agoAnd even in cases where the lowercase starting letter is somewhat accepted, the start of the sentence rule is still left untouched by most writers. Iphones come to mind.
- NullPrefix 5y agoHow do you spell iPhone when starting a sentence? >Iphone is a phone made by Apple
- toxik 5y agoIn my native language, the general advice from our language council is to NOT listen to corporation’s rules. You would write “an iphone”, and casing as usual. In fact you wouldn’t really use iphone at all, but smartphone. The idea is that the name casing rules are for showing respect, and an inanimate product does not deserve the same respect as a person. OTOH you would say Apple though, but I guess that avoids some obvious ambiguity
- layer8 5y agoThey don’t say “Gnuplot” is wrong. They even include themselves (“many of us”) in those people that don’t want to start sentences and title words with lower case. My reading of that paragraph is that while “GNUplot” is definitely incorrect, “Gnuplot” may naturally occur due to capitalization, just like with any lower-case noun.
- dw-im-here 5y agoWhy are we so bad at naming things
- boomboomsubban 5y agoPeople often think they're the first to think of somewhat obvious things, have many shared cultural experiences, and they like puns.
- andix 5y agoBecause it's hard. There are even professionals who think all day long how to name things (advertisement and marketing industry). A little open source project doesn't have the resources for that.
- threatripper 5y agoNames should come last (when everything else is known) but usually they come first (when most things are yet undecided). Once set, the name gets quite a lot of inertia and is hard to change. While naming things is hard, renaming things often isn't worth it.
- layer8 5y agoThere are more things to be named than good names, and also what constitutes a good name depends on our individual perception (prior experiences, cultural background, neurological disposition, etc.). Looking at it from the other side: Why are we so hung up on names? It’s not that we shouldn’t, but it’s an interesting topic. A computer doesn’t care as long as a name is syntactically unambiguous and fits the lengths constraints.
- mort96 5y agoGnuplot isn't a bad name in itself, it's a name which describes what it does (plotting system) with a small pun. Just bog standard stuff. GNU isn't a bad name, it's a cool self-referential acronym which also describes what it is really well (GNU's Not UNIX). The only problem is that those two names exist in the same cultural context.
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- gnfargbl 5y agoLicence is here: https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/gnuplot-main/ci/master/tree/Copyright https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/gnuplot-main/ci/master/tre... Unusually it requires you to distribute modifications to the released source code as a set of patches.
- kstenerud 5y agoIf you have to keep correcting people about your product's name, you made a poor name choice. Names, like everything else, have a U/X aspect to them.
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoThe first release of gnuplot was only three years after the GNU operating system was first announced to start development, and long ere it became widely known.
- josefx 5y agoLook a bit lower in the FAQ, apparently they were at some point associated with the FSF. Their license also seems copy left to me. So the name wasn't that wrong and since most end users don't care about these details it probably doesn't make sense to rename it now.
- sandyarmstrong 5y ago> So the name wasn't wrong I'm not sure what you mean by this. The name is a pun on the name of the gnu animal. Just because GNU also made the same pun doesn't mean they are related, or that they have anything to do with each other. gnuplot's history goes back to 1986, when GNU was in its infancy. The name was fine then, and is probably fine now. > Their license also seems copy left to me. The license is interesting! I'm surprised they've stuck with it. But yeah, it does appear copyleftish.
- Asraelite 5y agoI think this applies to LaTeX as well. The fact that people pronounce it "lateks" is entirely the creator's fault.
- einpoklum 5y agoThe FAQ says gnuplot used to be distributed by the FSF. So, perhaps it used to be GPL-licensed? I wonder what changed... is there really that much money to be had from forcing derivative source code to only be distributed as patches over the original? I don't get it.
- ReflectedImage 5y agoIt's ancient.
- kergonath 5y agoFor some context: gnuplot was first released in 1986; the GPL v1 was in 1989.
- hyperpallium2 5y agoWhy not just change the name to GNG (Gnuplot's Not Gnu)?
- jl6 5y agoIt probably doesn’t matter enough. There’s limited downside to people thinking this is an official GNU project. This is a minor entry on the FAQ, not a Crusade Against Wrongness like “GNU vs GNU/Linux vs GNU+Linux”.
- wongarsu 5y agoThe moment they announce that we will learn of someone GPG Next Generation (short: GNG) effort
- e12e 5y ago>... the name "gnuplot" was actually a compromise. I wanted to call it "llamaplot" and Colin wanted to call it "nplot." We agreed that "newplot" was acceptable but, we then discovered that there was an absolutely ghastly pascal program of that name that the Computer Science Dept. occasionally used. I decided that "gnuplot" would make a nice pun and after a fashion Colin agreed. Sounds like a change to camel plot (cplot) might make more sense (another even-toed ungulate, not easily mistaken for a gnu)? ;)
- agumonkey 5y agoGood numerical graphics
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoThis blew my mind - for 30ish years I've taken it for granted gnuplot was part of the GNU project.
- jokoon 5y agoI have to admit that it's pretty easy to build your own plotting software. As long as you have the ability to draw lines and pixels, it's easily done.
- Iv 5y agoDon't forget text plotting, that's the hard part. The technical challenge is not huge, but the amount of small and "easy" features a good plotting lib needs is huge.
- kergonath 5y agoIt’s easy if you keep it simple, your data is regular, and you don’t handle the multitude of corner cases. Doing it properly is about as difficult as processing Unicode correctly, which is to say quite bloody hard.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoLol if you have tons of free time on your hands. I'd like to see your replacement for gnuplot that has all the same capabilities. HackerNews will be awaiting your contribution!
- fnord77 5y agollamaplot would have been a great name
- layer8 5y agoExcept in fonts that don’t distinguish between “I” and “l”. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilama
- guenthert 5y agoThose ought to be banned, much like fonts which make the distinction between 1 and l difficult or O and 0.
- mgerdts 5y agoIt would still have a fun pronunciation controversy, with some calling it lamaplot and some calling it yamaplot.
- Y_Y 5y agoI pronounce llamaplot with the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative like in Welsh.
- rurban 5y ago, plotutils is GNU. Plotutils comes with vector and rasterizer support, as well as a library.
- hikarudo 5y agoEmbarrassing story time. I once introduced Richard Stallman to a fellow grad student in Japan like this (in Japanese): "He is the creator of GNU. You know, as in gnuplot." Stallman understood what I said and immediately corrected me: "gnuplot is not a part of GNU".
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoStallman speaks English, French, Spanish, and “somewhat flawed” Indonesian. — certainly he could not understand the difference in Japanese between that and saying that the two are unrelated?
- hikarudo 5y agoHe probably just understood "gnuplot", and was used to the confusion.
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoThat is what I inferred, but it seems a bit ungentlemanly to jump to that conclusion after merely picking “GNU” and “gnuplot” up in a sentence and nothing more, which is what most likely happened.
- afarrell 5y agoBut its reasonable to: 1. Conclude that its 90% likely to be what happened. 2. Not burden someone by asking a question you don’t need the answer to. 3. Disclaim credit for work you don’t lead.
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoI submit that adding "In case you just said gnuplot is part of GNU,” in front of it is not too long, and far less præsumptive.
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- technion 5y agoIt's incredible to open a source tree and see commits talking about OpenStep. Really shows you how long this has been around and taking BC seriously.
- HeckFeck 5y agoDOS is in there too. I wonder what else lies among the depths? Quite the achievement to have written software that is still in use and discussed 36 years later.
- mbeex 5y agoReading the comments, I get the impression that many people are somewhat lacking perspective. I've been writing software professionally for more than 25 years, > 30 years in total. gnuplot has been around all that time. Developed in an academic environment, people probably (certainly) had other things to do than argue about name comparisons to other projects. And nobody cared. There are things that are not an invariant of time. And frankly - open source along with the ideological battle over it is certainly one of those things. There were times with a much healthier way of dealing with zealots (Oh, this will cost me karma, but fortunately I don't care :-)
- dschuetz 5y agoThe plot thickens.
- johnminter 5y agoI am a thankful user of Gnuplot. As some before me mentioned, the naming history was complex. What is more important is that the developers provided - and still support - an excellent program that we may freely use under a very reasonable license.
- sys_64738 5y agognuplot is not GNU
- jonnrb 5y agoIf GNU’s not Unix and Gnuplot is not GNU, is Gnuplot Unix?
- enw 5y agoYes, if not GNU is Unix.
- guenthert 5y agoUh, while that was informative, more important is IMHO that gnuplot is a great tool and I like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all who contributed.
- gumby 5y agoSort of like gnutar (gnu tar) which actually now is a gnu project but had that name before the gnu project because gnu is John Gilmore’s uname.
- unixhero 5y agoPretty idiotic name, I realize this now. Great software package tho.
- utopcell 5y agognuplot is not gnu, gnu is not unix, unix is not multics. I wonder what multics was not like.
- Sporktacular 5y agoThis is why I hate these stupid OSS naming schemes. Screwing with capitalisation serves no function other than as a shibboleth - signalling that the devs belong to the free software tribe. I avoid software with dumb-ass case-sensitive names precisely for this reason. Look at the confusion, the time wasted on this topic. Why should it matter if it's octave vs. Octave? Normal users aren't case-sensitive, they just want to get on with their task. It just points to devs with the wrong priorities.