Perl wrote: > One of the main fears with this name, "Rakudo Perl 6" - at least when > it first came out, is that describing Rakudo Perl as, "An > implementation (one of possibly, many) of the Perl 6 Specification, > built on top of the Parrot Virtual Machine", will leave people going, > > "Huh?!" > > I think this is a good reason as anything, to think of getting a > visual representation of this, somewhat complicated idea out ASAP.
100% agreement here. [...] > One of the, well, the third letter in their alphabet is, "gimmel", > which comes from the word gamel, which, if you didn't guess already > means, "Camel"! It looks either like the neck of a camel - or, perhaps > it's hump. If you think of, "gimmel" as our, "C" you can sort of still > see a hump of a camel, if you just turn the, "C" 90 degrees, clockwise. And for those of you who use UTF-8 enabled mail programs and have Hebrew fonts installed: A gimel looks like this: ג (it's actually pretty close to a small Greek lambda). > Early written languages like Proto-Sinaitic are sort of the beginning > where pictograms that stood for what things looked like, where changed > into a way of writing about an idea - a lot of these early letters > still hold a lot of the original meanings. Hebrew, for instance still > does and each character is rich in back history. I like the Proto- > Sinaitic link, since it's less loaded quite as intensely as Hebrew, > which is invariably tied to major traditions and religions. > > The, "Gimmel" character is no exception. Start from, "Mysteries of > the Alphabet" > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > :: Original Meanings > Carrying the Primal Power beyond, outside the domestic setting > > :: Derivative Meanings > Outgoing, break, carry to another, do good, return a favor > > :: Acquired Meanings, Perpetuated By The Hebrew Language > > Ripen, Ween, Enable to ripen > Release Oneself, Break Away From > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Which I think beautiful illustrates a nice connection between Perl 5 > and Perl 6, Rakuda-do/Rakudo and haiga pen-names - and the, "Big > Picture" of what exactly Perl 6 is all about - standing apart from the > lineage, but still being, well, "Perl", using the Camel (gimmel) as a > fundamental icon from way WAY back in time there - > > and it all sounds so Perlish of picking and choosing the best from > many ideas and languages. I found the idea fascinating of using the gimel someway in association with Perl 6 and Rakudo - but I guess for most people it will just look like a weirdly shaped lambda. (That's not a bad things, just worth to mention IMHO) > Taking a step back from this soup of ideas and thinking of a logo > itself, it seems that it would help to produce something that's made > of somewhat interlocking and inter-related pieces: Perl on Parrot has > two separate pieces that come together and complete an idea. But > there's other things that could take, "Perl's" place, so it's really, > > $x on Parrot > > It seems that if a logo would be made, we can modularize, say, that > Parrot part and use it for other things - same with the Perl part, if > you get into it. Modularization is a way of getting ready for the > future. It also allows us to be lazy: we can use other people's work > already and - well, you all know this already. It would be an > interesting idea to use common programming best practices in the logo > of Perl itself. > > I bring that all up, because when I look at the various Perl projects, > they all look extremely interesting, but fragmented. It would almost > make sense to create a logo where pieces can be reused for related > thingies. Starting from a logo for Rakudo Perl, one could make a > simple Style Guide even, with easy-to-acquire graphic elements that > say, an application written using Rakudo Perl could use (at their > discretion) to enhance their own project and tie it back into Rakudo > Perl (and Perl in general). Taking the Perl 6 design goals to the logo - very nice! > So that's sort of the other thing I'm proposing: not only designing a > logo for Rakudo Perl, but having the concept of modularization of the > logo's basic elements part of the logo design itself and the sharing > and remixing of the design elements for related projects, to help > strengthen the, (and I'm not a fan of using this word) > "branding" (sigh) of Perl and making it not so much the "invisible > language that glues everything together", but have it where it > belongs: in a positive light with the general (geeky) public. > > Right now, all that means to me is perhaps a simple style guide and > the image and graphic resources easy to grab in open formats. It would be great if you could come up with such things - I fear I can't really help on that matter. My overall thoughts are "we need something like this" and "wow, these are really perlish ideas". Cheers, Moritz
