[GRASS-dev] terminology issues in grass7

[Paul Kelly]

On Sun, 10 Aug 2008, Moritz Lennert wrote:

>>> May I suggest "table link" in place of the current "layer" then? So each
>>> vector map can have multilpe "table links", and each "table" can have
>>> it's own "key column".
>> 
>> This sounds reasonable to me too. It clearly describes what the feature 
>> does.
>
> Well, to be absolutely precise, you don't need linked attribute tables to 
> have multiple layers, so I'm not sure that reducing the layer concept to 
> table links is really 100% correct.

I think though, that connecting multiple layers to different tables is the 
main application for layers? Are they much use for anything else? In which 
case, calling them tables makes things clearer. Perhaps even table would 
be enough - each vector map can be connected to multiple tables, each 
vector map can have multiple tables, each vector map can have multiple 
table links... is there a big difference in meaning between those 
different sentences? I feel removing the word "link" improves the clarity 
of the meaning without adding any additional ambiguity.

With regard to calling maps something different though, I think that would 
be very confusing and not a good idea (especially if they were renamed to 
layers). Map has IMHO a much clearer meaning than layer. There is the 
issue of ambiguity with a printed map I suppose, but use of the word in 
that context is kind of non-technical I feel. The use of the word map has 
a clearly defined historical meaning in GRASS (and influences other words 
too, e.g. a mapset = a collection of maps - should this be renamed a 
layerset?) and I feel that it should stay.

Paul