Finding a new troubleless name for KSokoban

Friedrich W. H. Kossebau kossebau at kde.org
Wed Aug 24 14:53:21 BST 2022


Hi,

with no more code change needs pressing right now, last night I went deeper 
into the ML archives to entertain me some more about the history of KSokoban.
The entertainment though ended after a bit, when I hit discussions talking 
about renaming KSokoban to avoid legal issues around trademarks.

So far, having seen lots of apps offering this game logic using "sokoban" as 
part of their name, I assumed that term simply references the game principle, 
otherwise lawyers would have already wiped out those usages. I.e. having 
already reached public domain in some way, like "chess", "go", etc.

But looking around I found reason to believe that indeed we better change the 
app name, to avoid potential issues. I don't think we should document the 
reason in public here for now, to avoid waking up interested parties when not 
yet needed.

So hurra, name finding ahead... 8)

Reversed name:
KNabokos, following the pattern of Kapman, Ksirk?
Seems "nabokos" is already used as term in the name by some other related 
games apps, so might help mapping the game type. Though it also is used for 
the reversed game logic variant, so might be misleading then.

Descriptive original name in other language:
"Sokoban" seems the English transcription of the Japanese term for 
warehouseman/storekeeper/warehousekeeper. Unclear to me though whether it 
actually refers to the person doing the moving or the one organizing it.
The rewrite Magazynier here already offered one alternative language name. 
Though having no own relation to the Polish language and also not the current 
app implementation, so we might want to check also other languages.
Starting with English, due to it being one of world's "lingua franca"s, even 
more in software, one better uses a prefix or postfix, in KDE commonly K. Or 
switching some letter to "k" where it works (often "c" or "g").
So could be KStoreKeeper, KWarehouseKeeper, KWarehouseMan (or some sex-
ignoring variant like KWarehousePerson). Among these KStoreKeeper would be my 
current favourite due to shortage.
For other languages, when only used mainly by locals, one might try the name 
without a prefix or postfix, might work without collisions at least in the 
rest of the world
Starting with the original author's language (guessed by the email address 
:)), dictionaries propose lagerarbetare, lagertjänsteman, lagerföreståndare. 
Quite some syllables and letters, which seems too hard for non-native 
speakers?
Next German (being locale speaker), Lagerist seems quite short, might be 
candidate (k'fied Lakerist will not work I think :) )
Without further own serious relations to languages, I looked at translations 
as shown by wiktionary.org. There came across skladník and felt attracted:
two "k"s ;), two syllables only, 8 letters only, might self-explain across all 
the speakers of slavic languages also, well, the latin script readers among 
them at least (I guess, sadly never finished learning one). No related 
trademarks registered on first checks. And at least in English & German no 
offensive meaning of that word known to me. Also has good lexical and phonetic 
distance (or what it is called) to other KDE app names, so low risk of mix-
ups.

Descriptive other name in any language:
One could also use other references for the game principle, relocating items 
by pushing them in a constraint environment. Or just parts of it. Or for 
instances in the current realization. Think GemPusher, 
For now I though think sticking to the original metaphor helps most to make 
people discover this implementation of the game principle and understand the 
relation to others.

Fantasy name:
Always possible, but no triggers for own ideas here right now.

So far my first-day thoughts on the matter. And "Skladník" being my first 
choice right now.

Your input desired here :)

Cheers
Friedrich




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