FreeBSD already comes with a program called vis

[passstab]

You might want to change the name of this project
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vis&sektion=1&apropos=0&manpath=freebsd
Edit: that software is also included in openbsd http://man.openbsd.org/vis.1 and netbsd http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?vis+1+NetBSD-6.0

[ghost]

The project could keep the same name: Only the binary and the man page needs to change their name?

Vis could get a server/client model in the future. The client could be visc, and the daemon visd?

[aeosynth]

nodejs has a similar issue on debian/ubuntu; there is already a node program, so the js runtime is renamed to nodejs. most other distros leave the runtime as node.

[passstab]

I don't think that is a good solution.

The other vis has quite a legacy, having first appeared in unix 8th edition.
Unlike the nodejs example which effects only debian and its downstream distributions, the other vis is now included in at least 5 separately maintained unix derivatives. In addition to the three I mentioned in my original comment, it is included in HP-UX and DragonflyBSD.

Leaving the naming to the different operating systems could mean more then a couple names, and it could be an annoyance for those who use more then one OS.

I think keeping the name vis would unnecessarily cause a lot of confusion.

[martanne]

I'm aware of the history leading to the original vis utility found on many Unix systems. And yes the name clash is unfortunate, at the time it was a deliberate decision. With hindsight it was probably a bad idea. I might indeed decide to rename the project at some point.

[czarkoff]

@martanne, I am making an OpenBSD port for vis, and I have to rename binary and manual page it to avoid name clash. Any suggestions regarding name? I came up with "vise" ("vis" + "e" for "editor").

[martanne]

NetBSD/pkgsrc settled for vis-editor which seems preferable. I suggested the same thing for the homebrew package. In practical terms users properly use a shell alias anyway.

As for the more general problem of renaming the whole project, some naming suggestions which I remember from the last time this was discussed:

• vs, might be too confusing with Visual Studio (Code)?
• siv
• mirj
• ...

I haven't actually properly checked whether some of them are already in use etc. Suggestions welcome.

[ghost]

Why not svi? It does not seems to be present in BSDs at least, and could mean Simple/Suckless VI[m] or Simple/Suckless Vi Improved (as in vi improved in a simple way).

[passstab]

there is something else called vis-editor

[czarkoff]

People won't necessarily use aliases unless they are forced to. Some may even switch between different vi-like editors depending on current task. So a simpler, shorter name would be a good thing.

Also, if renaming is on cards, it should probably happen as soon as possible, so that the amount of downstream projects that have to deal with package name change is as small as possible.

FWIW I'd rather go with svi or vie, so that vi part stands out.

[eworm-de]

Possibly a stupid idea, but... Let's discuss it. How about going with just v? In the end we are minimalistic. :D Would that clash anywhere?

[ghost]

@eworm-de: I think no one ever dare name a text editor v, but many people may have a l as an alias for ls, and v for vi/vim.

On the other hand, this editor is not the default, so if the user installs it, he may want to use it.

@czarkoff: vie means "life" in french. And it is simple as in "VIsual Editor".

[czarkoff]

Yes, that was my reasoning behind this suggestion back in 2014..

[ghost]

I also thought about triode, an anagram of editor, and the ancestor of the transistor. It is also very close to trimode (as the three modes of vi).

But it is too long to type: twice as much as vis!

[aeosynth]

savvy - sa(m) + vi(s). but this is also long.

edit - savi ?

[erf]

Here are the permutations of vim and sam:

vim vis via vmi vms vma vsi vsm vsa vai vam vas iva ivm ivs ima imv ims isa isv ism ias iav iam mvs mva mvi mis mia miv msi msa msv mai mas mav svi svm sva siv sim sia smv smi sma sav sai sam avs avi avm ais aiv aim ams amv ami asm asv asi

[shua]

is ve already taken? (visual editor)

or you can go the way of libzahl, and call it seh from german

[erf]

@shua a quick google search revealed this -> http://www.campbell-tx.net/campbellware/ve.php

In general when considering a name, i think the key combination should be as easy as possible to type.

[herrbischoff]

I like the idea of triode. It's a pleasant name which could also be shortened to tri.

[aeosynth]

the names sam and acme have no relation to ed or vi; this project doesn't have to pay homage either. call it me for 'modal editor'.

[luciusgone]

Seems stuck here. Shall I propose the name "fella" for this project is quite young compared to the other giant old mates.

[z3bra]

It could be something as simple as "edit", so that typing "edit file" would make sense! I also like the name "vie". As I read it in french, it makes english sentences sound fun :)
I would suggest not going with a name that is longer than 4 char though. Long names calls for complex projects in my mind.

[ghost]

I like "edit" (contains ed(1) in it), but it is hard to search through search engines. Also, http://man.freebsd.org/edit points to ee(1).

"edit" -> "edt" ?

[ddkn]

Reading through this list, I like the idea of siv, which is similar to a sieve /siv/. Defined as separating coarser from finer particles (code) -- seems to be what vis does as an editor. Short name, and still has sam, and vi in the name, as well as minimal and doesn't conflict.

Compiling for FreeBSD was when I noticed this issue.

[lanodan]

@josuah:

I think removing few letters is not gonna help people that have issues reading/writing and/or issues remembering the name, also it makes it non-pronounceable or ambigous.

---

I propose "stika"[stika] which comes from lojban:

• Lojban makes it non-ambiguous in meaning & pronunciation
• 1 letter longer than acme, 1 shorter than editor
• It doesn’t clash and I don’t think it’s gonna clash with other software (checked: gentoo, debian, freebsd, openbsd, plan9front, wikipedia(fr,en,de,es))

[ghost]

There's a lot of names now ! :) They are all fine, but we cannot pick them all.b

We could do the name change at version 1.0, with the announcement to the community (HN, lobste.rs, reddit...): "releasing **** 1.0".

Does it clash on some OS, in chronological order of the proposition:

name	Linux (man7.org)	Linux (die.net)	NetBSD	FreeBSD	OpenBSD	Plan 9
vis	✓	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗
vise	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
vs	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
siv	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
mirj	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
svi	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
vie	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
v	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
triode	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
savi	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
savvy	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
ve	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
seh	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
tri	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
me	✓	✓	~	✗	✓	✓
fella	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
edit	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓
edt	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
stika	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

To add more rows:

sed 's!.*!| `&` | [?](https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=site:man7.org/linux/+&) | [?](https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=site:linux.die.net/man+&) | [?](http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?&) | [?](http://man.freebsd.org/&) | [?](http://man.openbsd.org/&) | [?](https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=site:man.cat-v.org+&) |!'

[erf]

Maybe add a poll at some time? Or a random chooser ;)

[lanodan]

Should vis be renamed please also look for name clashes in Debian

Debian packages are indexed into repology.org, which I done checks against.

[msiism]

@josuah: Could you add vise to the poll as well?

[ghost]

From all the proposed names, vie is the one I like the most.

[hholst80]

My two cents on this garbage fire.

Global namespace is considered harmful. This project should not concern itself with the legacy interoperability of filenames on BSD. We can discuss what potential binary names could fit but it is the problem of the downstream packager to fix it how they seem fit. Meanwhile vis works just fine on my distro because there is no vis package nor vis binary and it installs as such. Go ahead and package it as visam why not there are infinite possibilities. Package maintainer makes the call and will maintain his choice for a long time and the founder of this project made his: vis.

[ghost]

suggesting vise as it is named on OpenBSD - the obsession with 3 character names is absurd when it's as unhelpful as it so far has been

[Henry-Wilson]

@hholst80 I agree. One software project is not responsible for avoiding all the names of other projects, obscure or not. The role of a project is simply to produce functional, clean software. The package management system for a given distro is responsible, as the whole point of package management is to satisfy dependencies and resolve conflicts.

The project is afforded the right to brand itself how it sees fit. Now, if for the sake of that branding we might rather call this project vise or visam or anything else, so be it. But if you all as project developers are satisfied with the name vis, so be that, too.

I am certainly satisfied as a user. Perhaps other potential users would be influenced by a "better" name; I wouldn't know. I stumbled across this project in my search for a good editor, and the name struck me as (hopefully) reflective of simplicity in the project.

[xxzozaxx]

what about 9vi ?!

Plan 9 powered VI [Optional extra letters Editor, Sam]

[lanodan]

[2019-12-12 10:35:44-0800] Ahmed Khaled:

what about 9vi ?! Plan *9* powered *VI* [Optional letters *E*ditor, *S*am]

Why not but the only Plan9 thing is sam.c and 9* is usually more for Plan9 (From User) Space.

[filipencopav]

@paride "svi" is even easier on dvorak

[noorwachid]

I like 2 letters.

why not vs for vi + sam? no one uses it? vscode use code.
vn for vi plan 9.
and the most crazy i found no one uses. ai for sam vi.

[7v0lk0v]

I'm with @Henry-Wilson and @hholst80.

I stumbled across this project in my search for a good editor, and the name struck me as (hopefully) reflective of simplicity in the project.

My thoughts exactly.

For all the talk about what would be an easy/short name to type... just add whatever shell alias you prefer. After ls and cd your editor of choice is probably the most invoked command, so typing even two chars is too much - I alias vis to just e (edit), just as ls is just l (a default alias on most systems) and cd is c.

[plasmoduck]

svi, keep it simple, stupid. Suckless/Simple VIm = svi

[ukn-ubi]

I really like svi, especially since vis is a great compliment to a system running suckless software

[jzbor]

Here are my two cts: Have you considered 'vine'? It is easy to pronounce an just straight up mixture of 'vi' and 'nine'. There is a Japanese Linux distro with this name, but no binary as far as I have checked. Also 'nive' but it might sound a little violent... Other than that I really like the idea of 'vie'.

[rafaelveggi]

"mestre", from "Combining modal editing with structural regular expressions"
But vis is a better name.

[plasmoduck]

Too long to type lol

[ddkn]

@3dc1d3: just add whatever shell alias you prefer

One annoyance is when you type man your_alias and it fails with "No manual entry for your_alias".

I run vis on Mac, Windows, OpenBSD, and rarely Linux. A consistent name would be nice across all OS's or distros, at this point I would just prefer consistency over anything else at the moment. Even though I am in favour of something short like vie (vi enhanced/extended) or svi (sam vi), which isn't much different from vis (vi sam).

For example:
On Mac: man vis-editor
On OpenBSD: man vise

Moving around systems makes it annoying, but that is my use case, which may be unique.

[mcepl]

I propose "stika"[stika] which comes from lojban:

Also, štika is Esox (or pike) in Czech and Esox is too much underutilized name considering how beautiful fish it is. Not mentioning Rob Pike, of course.

However, I would vote for siv or svi myself.

[plasmoduck]

sted - simple text editor

…

On Tue, 22 Mar 2022, 7:41 pm Matěj Cepl, ***@***.***> wrote: I propose "stika <http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/dict/stika>"[*stika*] which comes from lojban: Also, štika <https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0tika> is Esox <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esox> (or pike) in Czech and Esox is too much underutilized name considering how beautiful fish it is. However, I would vote for siv or svi myself. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#338 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AJJMIYHDQAGCZJHTCF66PYTVBGBVFANCNFSM4CHE7X4A> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mcepl]

svi, keep it simple, stupid. Suckless/Simple VIm = svi

Except it is not: simple VI is not an editor with Lua plugins etc. If you need something truly suckless than I would go for nvi or something of that ilk.

Exactly, not to confuse this with vi, I would suggest siv.

[rumaks-xyz]

I propose via.

• If vis stands for vi + sam, then via could stand for vi + sam or vi + acme
• Appears to not be taken by any other programs (please correct me if I'm wrong on this)
• via sounds somewhat similar to Lua.
• It only differs from vis and vim by one character and is equally easy to type.
• Just like Vim, Vis is mostly based on vi, so it makes sense that the name would start with vi

[johngebbie]

You've probably been waiting for my suggestion:

vix - vi extended

[mcepl]

I have no idea who has the authority to adjudicate on this one? @martanne ? @ninewise ? @rnpnr ? Could we get this to some conclusion, please?

[rnpnr]

If your package repository doesn't have categories then I think
vis-editor or vise is fine with the first preferred. Same goes for
the binary.

What @martanne said 5 years ago is also true:

In practical terms users properly use a shell alias anyway.

If this has to be done I think the best suggestion I have seen is siv.
@mcepl is correct, this isn't simple/suckless vi; the s stands for
sam or 'Structural Regular Expressions'. The name should avoid that
misrepresentation.

In any case @martanne is the one who would have to do this since the
repo would need to be renamed not just the binary.

For the time being I am considering locking this conversation since we
don't really need anymore suggestions.

[mcepl]

• If vis stands for vi + sam, then via could stand for vi + sam or vi + acme

Except vis has almost nothing common with ACME, which is mostly GUI, shell-like or IDE-like environment, while vis is a very simple editor-only.

[polluks2]

macOS also comes with a program called vis:
"display non-printable characters in a visual format"

[VehementHam]

I like 2 letters.

why not vs for vi + sam? no one uses it? vscode use code. vn for vi plan 9. and the most crazy i found no one uses. ai for sam vi.

I aliased vis to vs

[mcepl]

macOS also comes with a program called vis: "display non-printable characters in a visual format"

MacOS uses a lot of *BSD utils, so this is actually the same vis(1) with which this issue started.