Term "Configuration"

[Brian T Rice]

On Sat, 26 Apr 2003, Jeff Cutsinger wrote:

> Armin Rigo <arigo@tunes.org> said:
>
> > I thought it'd be worth pointing out that just like you when I first
> > read about "configuration" I was thinking in the sense of a set of
> > user-definable parameters (the "configuration dialog box" of many GUI
> > programs, or the ".xyz" configuration files).
> >
> > Brian's sense is "a collection of objects and relationships which hold
> > over them".
>
> Hrm. I thought the point was kind of that a "Configuration" (water's meaning)
> was a generalization of a "Configuration" (general meaning). If not, the name
> needs to be changed to something else to avoid mass confusion, methinks.

No, I really don't think that in this case there's a real confusion. Most
people munge the word "configuration" as a resulting state with the
process it takes to acheive that state, "configuring". Unless there's a
totally dis-ambiguous word for the former which does not have an
association with the latter, this objection is fairly weak.

>From wordnet, I get the synonyms "constellation" and "structure", both of
which aren't properly suggestive.

Does anyone have a better idea? This concept is too useful to not explain
properly.

-- 
Brian T. Rice
LOGOS Research and Development
mailto:water@tunes.org
http://tunes.org/~water/