Version Terminology

[Mark S. Miller <mark>]

Date: Wed, 13 Dec 89 12:43:18 PST
   From: marcs (Marc Stiegler)


   I like markm's term "state" to refer to sequential versions, 
   but I like ravi's term "edition" even more, for its obvious literary 
   overtones. So I cast my vote in favor of using the term "version" to 
   mean both parallel and sequential versions, use the term "variation" 
   to mean parallel versions, and the term "edition" to mean sequential 
   versions. Barring intense objections, everyone will see this 
   terminology in the infofactory frontend in the Capabilities Review 
   (which has been rescheduled to sunday to allow ravi to recover 
   from the flu).

   --marcs

Considering how confused I am about everyone else's use of terms, I
imagine you all may be equally confused about mine.  There are two
separate concepts that need to be named: states/Stamps, and
identities/Berts.  I take it what everyone is talking about is
terminology to distinguish between various kinds of relationships
among states/Stamps (such as sequential vs parallel derivation).  Is
this even close to correct?

If so, I'd like to see us drop the term "version", since there are
both good reasons for this to name Stamp-like things, and for it to
name Bert-like things.  It is usually dangerous to reuse a term that
people are used to using in a fuzzy way to mean some precise subset of
the original meaning.  Also, we still need terms for the derivation
relationships among Bert-like things.