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Date:13 Dec 2004 21:34:30 -0000 
Subject:Re: Standard Names 
From:Aaron Sloman 
Volume-ID: 

Steve,

> What are the standard spellings for terms such as Poplog, Pop-11 and so on?
> And is there a HELP file where this is described?  My first stop was
> REF STANDARDS but I didn't see anything quite right there.

The standard is that there is no standard, though there might have been
at some point in the past when either Systems Designers or Cognitive
Applications was marketing poplog.

Nobody has ever been in a position to specify a standard auhoritatively,
though the old Poplog Users Group PLUG came close to having some sort of
authority -- but no enforcement power. Perhaps it also took a decision,
now covered in the sands of time?

For a while Poplog and the individual language names were usually
presented in upper case like BASIC, LISP, etc. but that got tiresome,
and I tend to write 'Poplog' except when I am in too much of a hurry.

There used to be POP2, then POP10 (POP2 implemented on a PDP 10
computer) then WPOP (a new more comprehensive implementation).

When it was implemented on a PDP11/40 computer it was called
either Pop-11 or Pop11, though it was always invoked as
    pop11

The books published in the 1980s were

POP-11: a practical language for artificial intelligence
    Rosalind Barrett Allan Ramsay and Aaron Sloman
    Barrett, A Sloman) Ellis-Horwood, 1985

AI in Practice: programming examples in POP-11
    Ellis-Horwood, 1986.

POP-11 programming for Artificial Intelligence,
    Addison-Wesley. (QE 1690 Pop). More of an introductory
    BURTON, M and SHADBOLT, N. (1987)


AlphaPop POP-11 Language Guide and Reference Manual,
    Cognitive Applications Ltd. (1987)

Programming in POP-11,
    Blackwell
        LAVENTHOL, J. (1987)

Natural Language Processing in POP-11: an Introduction to Computational Linguistics.
        Addison-Wesley.
        GAZDAR, G. and MELLISH, C. (1989)

Pop-11 Comes of Age
        Ellis Horwood 1989
        Anderson, James, editor.

So most of the published books used the hyphen in their titles.

Giving google 'pop11' produces about 35,600 entries.
Giving google 'pop-11' produces about 93,200 entries

However some of the entries are irrelevant, as usual, eg.
    http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/pops/pop11.16sstp.pdf

So on statistical grounds the hyphen wins, though I have started finding
it irritating in recent years, especially as I had to remember to leave
it out when typing instructions for users.

The 'teach primer' file, which is equivalent to the online primer
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/primer/

uses the name both with and without the hyphen.

I don't know if that helps.

Does anything hang on it?
Aaron