William T Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Sat, Mar 28, 1998 at 03:41:52PM -0500:
> Traditionally, 'Unices' is correct. According to grammar rules, 'Unixes'
> would probably also be acceptable, but you know that Unixy types are
> seldom too hung up on grammar rules. :) Unixen is wrong. There is a term
> "Vaxen" for Vaxes based on the pluralization of some words ending in X,
> which led to the term "boxen" for referring to systems of any type.
I'm wondering if grammer rules apply though. I'm afraid that the answer
is lost in antiquity. Perhaps we could ask Kernighan?
> On the subject of capitalization, UNIX(tm) was originally spelled in all
> caps as an acronym. It didn't stand for anything, but that's how it was
> spelled. You have to use the (tm) if you do it this way. :) The term
> UN*X was adopted to avoid and simultaneously poke fun at the legal aspects
> of the UNIX(tm) spelling. It's also used in the modern world to refer to
> any flavor of Unix, rather than a specific version. In the modern world,
> AT&T doesn't care about their UNIX(tm) trademark anymore so it is now
> generally accepted to say Unix (presumably to avoid holding down the shift
> key for four characters).
You contradict yourself: UNIX, all caps, acronym. But doesn't stand for
anything. By definition, an acronym does stand for something. I was
told a while back that UNIX comes from UNIfied Xface (or interface),
derived from the idea that it treats everything as a file. This is
plausible. But I still just use "Unix" as a colloquialism.
> Unless we are talking about different things when we say RAD. When *I*
> say RAD I mean a programming language that can build more complex programs
> out of simple parts and which manage so many difficult things - memory
> allocation, pointers, hash tables, string manipulation, user input, window
> events, and so on, for the programmer, so he can concentrate on the
> program.
Here again, semantic issues. In any case, I wish you luck in developing
applications...rapidly! :)
--
Scott
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