der Mouse wrote:
>>>The network bootloader entry point should be nisse(), not start().
> 
>>Presumably "nisse" has some obvious meaning in a language other than
>>English?
> 
> In Norwegian, it has a meaning which I cannot think of a precise
> English translation for.  ("Elf" and "pixie" are close but not really
> precise enough.  Or, it's possible - not unlikely, actually - that my
> weak understanding of its meaning is the actual problem.)  Since
> port-vax came from Sweden, and Swedish is very close to Norwegian, it
> seems possible that this is the origin of its use in the bootloader.

Ah. Good point. I forgot about that one in my previous letter. A "nisse" 
can be a sort of friendly gnome as well (I think that is a better 
translation).
Not sure if that was the intention, but it's good anyway. "nisse" 
sometimes have a tendency among swedish programmers to be used as a 
random junk name. Like "foo", "bar", "foobar", "gazonk", "quux", and all 
other of the kind...

I guess Ragge will have to tell what the thought was in this case.

> However, all three uses I see use it as if it meant "start", so perhaps
> I'm totally off base here.
> 
> Whether this is an argument for or against changing it, or neither, is
> another question entirely.
> 
> On the one hand, I can see thorpej's point; comprehensibility of code
> is a Good Thing.  But on the other hand, this sort of thing lends a
> kind of colour to the system that I for one find interesting and worth
> preserving.  In this particular case, I would be inclined to keep the
> name but comment it everywhere it's used (I see only three places the
> name is used, one of which is mostly irrelevant here) as being
> maintained for historical reasons.

Maybe. But if it's just a random name because no other popped into the 
programmmers head at the time, it might as well change to something more 
obvious.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol