World: r3wp

What is interesting (and surprising me), is the fact, that, not reading/remembering 
the REBOL function naming convention, lots of people immediately 
were able to define any kinds of "ad hoc rules" which (purportedly) 
were in effect in Rebol for function naming, and used that as their 
argument why their preferred name was in accordance with the REBOL 
function naming convention.

I always had the impression that the "word names" section in the 
style guide is more descriptive than prescriptive. To that effect, 
I'm very much in favour of documenting *-of as an alternate convention.

We should state that in above ticket as na alternative, if already 
not there ...

Sorry, but it makes no sense to interpret this optional convention 
strictly. If we do, we also have to do the following renames:

about? abs? absolute? alias? arccosine? arcsine? arctangent? as-binar? 
as-pair? as-string?

I hope you can find the rest yourself for b-z

about is not a noun as far as I know, abs is not a noun as well...

Your previous argument, as I remember it, was that this convention 
applies to properties

no, my argument was, that we have a convention for naming functions

Yes, a convention, not a low cut out in stone, and we already established 
that only a select subset of standard words conforms to it

a law

so what, your argument does not apply anyway, except for some nouns 
naming math operations

So, it's not consistent

yes, that is what I pointed at using words-of, etc. as examples. 
Your examples do not apply, since they are either nouns naming math 
operations or not nouns at all.

Every variable name is a noun, in principle. Do we have to use question 
marks on all variables?

Why would only math operations be excempt from this law?

it is hard to use a logic argument when you refuse to discern nouns 
from other words, but, in that case, you are unable to stick to the 
function naming convention anyway, and I don't know what do you want 
to discuss

How am I refusing to discern nouns from other words?

Every variable name is a noun, in principle.

How is that not true?

I mean variable in the sense of traditional programming languages

we do not have "variable names" we have words

See above

foreach [cat? dog?] [1 2 3 4] [fight cat? dog?]

This would be the result of your rule

this would be the result?

*very unlikely*

Cats and dogs are nouns

so what

You said your rule applies to nouns

not my rule, please read the rule, I am not the one who wrote/defined 
it, I am only using it

No, you are interpreting it for us, while many of us have a different 
interpretation

To begin with, I never liked faces-of or faces? proposals.
faces
 should be enough.
Plural means that it returns a serie of faces.

It may be a static list (reference) or a constructed one (function), 
I don't bother.
The context give all the hints I need.
*-of is a lame and useless convention.

Because a property or a method is always the relative "-of" something 
else .

your interpretation is *quite exceptional*, how could I be able to 
get to the same one?

I agree, faces should be enough, unless that is likely to be used 
for something else in the same context, in which case you can switch 
to a convention for a more elaborate name

Ladislav, I'm just asking you how your interpretation works, and 
you said it applies to nouns

Are you saying, that you are unable to read the rule, and see, that 
it applies to nouns?

Are you unable to see that this rule has not been applied to most 
REBOL words?

Because it is a REBOL function naming convention, which you happen 
to not know, since you did not read it yet

I did read it

Why do you keep putting falsehoods in my mouth?

Then you should know, that it should not apply to most Rebol words

Why not? You say it's about all nouns

http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/nouns.html

A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and 
abstract idea. Nouns are usually the first words which small children 
learn. The highlighted words in the following sentences are all nouns:

    Late last *year* our *neighbours* bought a *goat*.
    *Portia* *White* was an *opera* *singer*.

    The *bus* *inspector* looked at all the *passengers*' *passes*.

    According to *Plutarch*, the *library* at *Alexandria* was destroyed 
    in 48 B.C.
    *Philosophy* is of little *comfort* to the *starving*.

According to you, all starred words (no rich text in AltME) should 
get question marks

For other people, just to make sure they understand even if they 
don't remember the wording of the http://www.rebol.com/r3/docs/concepts/scripts-style.html#section-10
convention:


- the convention applies *only* to function names, not to the REBOL 
words in general

- when picking a name for a function, any candidate is not a name 
yet, it is just a word/words, and it can be examined, whether it 
is a noun or not
- etc.

Most REBOL words hold functions, so what's the difference? And with 
all words, it's impossible to tell from the lexical notation if it's 
a function or not

The difference is, that when sticking to the convention, it is easier 
to find out, that:


DO is a function, PRINT is a function, GET is a function, LENGTH? 
is a function

So I ask again, what about the REBOL functions that don't conform 
to this convention?