[Debtags-devel] Good short descriptions: the protocols

[Torsten Marek]

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Hi again,

I was working with the vocabulary quite a lot in the last days, and quite a lot
of things met my eye (see my high number of emails regarding vocabulary issues,
and there's more to come;-)

This time it's about short descriptions of the protocols:
Nearly every protocol has a different kind of description:
 * some just rephrase the protocal acronym (CORBA)
 * some rephrase it and add some text (ATM network protocol)
 * some have a textual explanation (Next Generation IP Internet Protocol/ipv6,
Mail access via POP3/pop3)
 * some have their expansion together with the acronym (Internet Relay Chat (IRC))

Since the short description is used as the name of the tag in applications, a
bit of unification would do good here.
My proposal, v1:
1. add the acronym as the short description. All acronyms are well-known, maybe
even better than the long versions.
This is not possible in all cases, for instance for the im protocols. In this
case, just write "XYZ instant messaging" ("instant messaging" looks weird, but
it's a proper enough term to have it's wikipedia entry).
Other cases might arise, but they have to be solved on one-to-one basis.
2. Add the acronym expension to the long description (maybe followed by the
acronym in parentheses), together with a small synopsis what this protocol
actually does; or just describe the in some sentences and mention the expansion
once.


A sample entry then would look like this:

Tag: protocol::http
Description: HTTP
 HyperText Transport Protocol
 .
 Stateless protocol for data transfer between HTTP servers (like Apache) and
clients (such as web browser) in the WWW.

or

 The HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP) controls communication and data
transfer between HTTP servers (like Apache) and clients (such as web browsers)
on the WWW.


Please don't mock me because of the long explanation, it can definitely get
better than that (I just search for "define:http" and found out that the most
German explanations were off-the-point, like "Protocol for transfer of HTML files).

greetings

Torsten
- --
Torsten Marek <shlomme at gmx.net>
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