Re: translation of the word factory...

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 19:30, Danilo Segan wrote:
> среда, 03. септембар 2003. 09:36:51 CEST — Arafat Medini написа:
[...]
> > Factory Fac"to*ry, n.; pl. Factories (-r?z). Cf. F.
> >    factorerie.
> >    1. A house or place where factors, or commercial agents,
> >       reside, to transact business for their employers. ``The
> >       Company's factory at Madras.'' --Burke.
> > 
> >    2. The body of factors in any place; as, a chaplain to a
> >       British factory. --W. Guthrie.
> > 
> > So what I'm pointing to: isn't the "body of factors" a more accurate
> > translation for the word, as factors are normally used in  
> > Informatics!!!
> 
> "Producers" are also quite commonly used in informatics.
> 
> Btw, according to the purpose of CORBA, I think it would be more of a  
> 1, rather than 2 (what you're suggesting).
> 
> > And the strings finally get a meaning!!!
> > What do you think of it? It's a widespread mistake I think, but if I
> > am wrong correct me...

I think you are wrong (see below). :-)

> It seems to me to be a CORBA terminology (I'll have to check) -- which  
> means that it's a word with *new meaning assigned*, so I believe it's  
> up to translators to choose any word suitable for their language.

It's not really new to CORBA. Factory functions (or classes) and factory
patterns have been around for a while.

> It's probably a lack of understanding the origin of the term that  
> causes the confusion.
> 
> Okay, I've found it explained in here:
> http://edocs.bea.com/elink/adapter/elinkcor/v10/corug/corugglo.htm
> 
> factory
> 
>    Any distributed CORBA object that returns an object reference to  
> other distributed CORBA objects. A factory is located in the server  
> application.

At the risk of pouring oil onto the fire, let me add a technical
viewpoint: the "factory" objects in CORBA and bonobo and friends are
producers of application instances. They are the "mother ship" from
which instances of the server pour forth to perform work.

So the "producing factory" sense is correct here.

However, that does not get around the issue, as has been noted, that
this is a highly technical term. Factory objects and classes and
functions are not really in common use outside computer science. So if
we are exposing the term to users in more places than just the --help
string of gnome-terminal and a couple of error messages, there is a bug
report or two required for some future GNOME releases.

Cheers,
Malcolm