Re: Re: write-tree is pasky-0.4

[Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz>]

Dear diary, on Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 10:58:10PM CEST, I got a letter
where "C. Scott Ananian" <cscott@cscott.net> told me that...
> On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> >to yours is no problem for me.  Currently I see your HEAD is at
> >461aef08823a18a6c69d472499ef5257f8c7f6c8, so I will generate a
> >set of patches against it.
> 
> Have you considered using an s/key-like system to make these hashes more 
> human-readable?  Using the S/Key translation (11-bit chunks map to a 1-4 
> letter word), Linus' HEAD is at:
>   WOW-SCAN-NAVE-AUK-JILL-BASH-HI-LACE-LID-RIDE-RUSE-LINE-GLEE-WICK-A
> ...which is a little longer, but speaking of branch "wow-scan" (which 
> gives 22 bits of disambiguation) is probably less error-prone than 
> discussing branch '461...' (only 12 bits).
> 
> You could supercharge this algorithm by using (say) 
> /usr/dict/american-english-large (>2^17 words; 160 bits of hash = 10 
> dictionary words), or mixing upper and lower case (likely to reduce the 15 
> word s/key phrase to ~11 words) to give something like
>    RiDe-Rift-rIMe-rOSy-ScaR-sCat-ShiN-sIde-Sine-seeK-TIEd-TINT
> My personal feeling is that case is likely to be dropped in casual 
> conversation, so speaking of branch 'wow', 'wow-scan', or 'wow-scan-nave' 
> is likely to be significantly more useful than trying to pronounce 
> mixed-cased versions of these.
> 
> This is obviously a cogito issue, rather than a git-fs thing.

I kind of like it, the only thing I fear is possible conflict with
branch names; it is not very likely though, I think. I believe (at
least) the first three words should be used if possible.

I'm not sure in what cases do you think we should use those "verbal"
names, though. Of course we should accept them as IDs, but I don't think
we should ever show them automatically. Probably provide a trivial to
use tool to convert to them, and parameters for *-id tools to show them.

I assume we would have a custom tool for the translation?

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
Stuff: http://pasky.or.cz/
C++: an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog. -- Steve Taylor