Too late for Makie name change?

[Nathan_Boyer]

I think most new Julia users start plotting with Plots.jl because the name makes sense. Any chance of reviving this old plea?

Prerelease: MakiE - interactive plotting!

I’d like to make another plea to use the name Visualize for the final version instead of the now-abandoned prototype, rather than the obscure and IMO strangely capitalized MakiE name.

[sdanisch]

Not really, I’m pretty happy with the name and I don’t think there is a name so significantly better that it would be worth the hassle at this point.

[StefanKarpinski]

It seems way too late. There’s a significant brand created at this point and as Simon said, changing the name would be a huge hassle at this point. I’m just glad that the weirdly capitalized E is gone.

[carstenbauer]

On a more general note, the ship to always use clear / descriptive names instead of “brands” has long sailed anyways. See Zygote, Enzyme, Javis, Luxor, Polyester, …, and my personal favorites Cthulhu (and Yggdrasil).

[josuagrw]

Keep in mind this is actively encouraged in the manual:

A less systematic name may suit a package that implements one of several possible approaches to its domain.

• Julia does not have a single comprehensive plotting package. Instead, Gadfly , PyPlot , Winston and other packages each implement a unique approach based on a particular design philosophy.
• In contrast, SortingAlgorithms provides a consistent interface to use many well-established sorting algorithms.

[Nathan_Boyer]

@carstenbauer

The ship to always use clear / descriptive names instead of “brands” has long sailed anyways.

Bummer.

@josuagrw

A less systematic name may suit a package that implements one of several possible approaches to its domain.

• Julia does not have a single comprehensive plotting package. Instead, Gadfly , PyPlot , Winston and other packages each implement a unique approach based on a particular design philosophy.

I still think it is better to see a description of the approach in the name rather than something tangentially related that sounds cool. Off the top of my head, “GoGPlots.jl” instead of “Gadfly.jl”.

[tbeason]

As long as there is good discoverability then I think naming isn’t much of an issue. Plotting (under the name Visualization) is one of the “Ecosystem” tabs on the homepage, which mentions Makie alongside many of the other most used plotting packages.

[TheCedarPrince]

Just a small playful , @Wikunia and I were somewhat happy with the name Javis as it actually stands for “Julia Animations and Visualizations”
I suppose that is a bit hard to guess from the name though

[Nathan_Boyer]

@tbeason

As long as there is good discoverability then I think naming isn’t much of an issue.

Package naming is also important for reading others’ code to understand the purpose of their dependencies.

[redpanda1234]

Not saying that the name is great, but I just wanted to say that I bet the capitalization on the E was because Makie.jl was named for 蒔絵 (IPA: [ma̠kʲie̞]), a traditional Japanese laquer technique. This is stated in the README for the project on Github.

Here, “maki” is the verb stem form of the verb 蒔く (“maku”) and “e” is “picture” or “painting.” So “makie” is a compound word, and probably that’s why they chose the given capitalization.