>It's not an argument, it's a statement of fact. I'm not a more than a Lua dilettante, yet I know this. The name derives from a Portugese word, so it should be treated as a pronoun, not an acronym.
And again, the fact that the name derives from an actual word tells us nothing about how we should treat a language that uses it.
For example, I can make a language called "table" and specify in the docs and faq that it should be written as TABLE (all caps).
Also: "pronoun"? Huh? Pronouns are words like "his", "him" etc. Perhaps you meant "noun"? Still, we don't treat either nouns or pronouns with an initial capital mid-sentence, whereas for Lua we do.
>GNU is an acronym, which is why it's spelled that way, which is stated on their websites.
My point is, the spelling is a arbitrary decision by the project. Notice how, despite it being an acronym they don't write G.N.U, but GNU (and keep the gnu animal imagery).
They could have dictated for us to spell it gnu or Gnu or G.n.u, just as easily.
Case in point: the BETA programming language is spelled in all-caps despite BOTH not being and acronym AND being a proper english word.
Excellent points. According to the project site, "Lua" is correct.
> "Lua" (pronounced LOO-ah) means "Moon" in Portuguese. As such, it is neither an acronym nor an abbreviation, but a noun. More specifically, "Lua" is a name, the name of the Earth's moon and the name of the language. Like most names, it should be written in lower case with an initial capital, that is, "Lua". Please do not write it as "LUA", which is both ugly and confusing, because then it becomes an acronym with different meanings for different people. So, please, write "Lua" right!
And again, the fact that the name derives from an actual word tells us nothing about how we should treat a language that uses it.
For example, I can make a language called "table" and specify in the docs and faq that it should be written as TABLE (all caps).
Also: "pronoun"? Huh? Pronouns are words like "his", "him" etc. Perhaps you meant "noun"? Still, we don't treat either nouns or pronouns with an initial capital mid-sentence, whereas for Lua we do.
>GNU is an acronym, which is why it's spelled that way, which is stated on their websites.
My point is, the spelling is a arbitrary decision by the project. Notice how, despite it being an acronym they don't write G.N.U, but GNU (and keep the gnu animal imagery). They could have dictated for us to spell it gnu or Gnu or G.n.u, just as easily.
Case in point: the BETA programming language is spelled in all-caps despite BOTH not being and acronym AND being a proper english word.