SuttaCentral
OK, so we have “volume and page” for the Pali and “volume, page, column and line number” for the Chinese. Is there a more general term for these references?
If I wanted to be precise in the code I could just say LocationInOriginalText or even RootText.location.
I actually prefer “volume and page” myself, as there are many different reference systems. For example, Taisho texts can also be referenced by text number, page, col, line. Those numbers can look like volume and page numbers but are not the same, so labeling them explicitly as “Volume and Page” numbers lets the reader know exactly what they are and how to use them
That’s fine then. VolumeAndPage works or just plain volpage as it is already used consistently.
How about this:
How would you refer to the phrase “The Fruits of the Ascetic Life”?
I’m going with “title”.
In some places, e.g. the html_text collection, we say name which is easy to confuse with the author’s name. If you prefer “name” then I’d use sutta_name and author_name.
Perhaps sutta_title would be good. I am not sure if this matters for your purposes, but there are also subtitles, especially in DN suttas, like for example
DN2:1.0: 1. Rājāmaccakathā
- A Discussion With the King’s Ministers
OK then. We can use title and subtitle to refer to these things.
Great to have our users easily accessible!
Thinking about it a bit more, I am not sure if subtitle is the best word. A “subtitle” is typically something that gives an explanation to the title, i.e. something that occurs in a text once, just underneath the actual title.
But what we have here are perhaps better called “sub-headings”; they are subordinate headings on a level underneath the title that structure long suttas.
Not sure what you prefer for your purposes.
It’s really up to the users. What sounds right? We have:
I have no idea if I am in any way a representative user. I am not even a native English speaker and usually try my best to memorize whatever developers invent to name things. I am not used to being asked about such things! 
So well, here my thoughts:
sutta_title or title would sound good to me.subtitle sounds misleading, so perhaps subheading or sub_heading would do the job.But as I said, I am not a native speaker and might easily misattribute words.
OK!
The thing is, in an IDE it’s really easy just to rename things. If anyone has another suggestion, it’s no trouble for me. I’m hoping that over time a proper domain model will emerge. That’s the sort of thing that lasts far longer than any language, framework or database technology.
I would also opt for sutta title. I haven’t done this before (and haven’t actually come across one here on the forum) but I think I learned in the tutorial that we can create polls. Might be a good idea if looking for general feedback from more users…
So, Ven. @Jhanarato has been using the term “users” but he is specifically talking about “developer users.” Unless you are working with the SuttaCentral code or APIs, this conversation really isn’t relevant to most people.
Ah, that confused me too. Thanks for making it clear.
Nope, I’m talking about user users. There was a nice talk with Martin Fowler recently. The way he put it was that a non-programmer user looking at the code would sort of understand what is going on. At the very least they should recognize the vocabulary.
So the questions I’m asking in this thread are actually, “What do normal people call this thing?” It is up to the developers to use those terms in a rigorous way.
Ubiquitous language is just part of domain driven design. You can get a brief overview of DDD on wikipedia:
Ok, now I get it. In another way, “If a regular user happened to be looking at the code, what would they expect the name of this to be.”
Thanks for all your hard work.
Pretty much that!
You’re probably right in talking about “developer users”. There are a few “domain experts” like yourself who are available to answer my questions.
That is a good thing, so thanks!
At most I qualify as a domain groupie.
I think what you are trying to achieve is really valuable. Thanks!