[cap-talk] Delegating Responsibility in Digital Systems: Horton's "Who Done It?"

[Jed Donnelley]

At 05:46 PM 5/28/2007, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
>On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 17:44 -0700, Mark S. Miller wrote:
> > Kevin Reid wrote:
> > > I've never seen "ocaps" used before.
> >
> > We needed something short for this paper. Several people found 
> "objcaps" ugly.
>
>Would "obcaps" work?  The 'j' is probably the source of the objection.
>--

Of course "obcaps" would 'work', but how is that any better than "ocap"?

It seems to me this form of taking a relatively known abbreviation
(in this case "cap" or "caps") and adding a one letter specifier
(in this case the "o" for object) is a fairly common usage.
Adding the additional "b" for "obcap" doesn't to me convey any
more meaning (you still need to know that the "o" stands for
object), so why add the extra character?

If it seems to make it clearer to others, then I certainly have
no substantive objection to the additional character.  Of course
it would be most clear to carry something like object/capability
throughout, but that seems too much.

--Jed  http://www.webstart.com/jed-signature.html