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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Regarding the ext/curl extension
From: stas@zend.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

> I am the primary author and maintainer of the libcurl library, the 
> underlying library that supports the PHP extension named... eh, right. 
> What is the extension called really? CURL? ext/curl? curl?

It's called "CURL extension", I'd say. As there's MySQL extension, Json 
extension, DOM extension, SOAP extension - there's CURL extension.

> o You call the binding CURL or similar. The heavy mentioning of libcurl in
>   your docs also tend to make PHP people to believe they actually "use
>   libcurl".

Don't they?

> o There's a huge lack of docs for the PHP binding for libcurl on the 
> php.net
>   site. Most options are only listed with their names, so to figure out
>   exactly what the names mean (and more) they need to search elsewhere.

Missing docs are bad. PHP being open-source community project, it means 
nobody did it - and somebody has to step up and do it.

>   In a (private) conversation with a PHP team member he said the 
> extension is
>   called 'ext/curl' but I don't think that's a lot better since that's just
>   going to be seen as "the extension called curl" to people. And then we're
>   back on square 0.

ext/curl is the path where the extension resides. As for name for the 
extension, there are many names used in different context (as a person 
can have first name, last name, email, driver's license number, Skype 
ID, Facebook username, a nickname for close friends, other nickname only 
parents use, etc.). Usually it is just referred to as curl extension, 
unless the context requires different name.

> o I've been told by more than one PHP team member that renaming the 
> extension
>   in your end is more or less out of the question, so even though I would

It doesn't make sense to name the extension "php/curl" - everything 
inside PHP is, well, PHP and no extension ever had php/ prefix in it's 
name. It is custom to name extensions by the functional module they 
represent. Externally, of course, you can refer to it as PHP/curl but 
I'd still suggest to use something like "curl PHP extension" because 
most people wouldn't know what is "PHP/CURL".

>   *really* want that (and no other libcurl binding has hijacked one of our
>   names like this), I can only see one really good way to solve this 

I do not think it is proper to refer to the extension name as 
"hijacking". No more than having file named MyApplet.java is a 
"hijacking" of the Java language name. The extension name simply refers 
to the functional module it implements.

> You need to vastly extend the amount of documentation for the PHP 
> binding for libcurl (I seriously don't know how to refer to it) on your 
> site to drastically reduce the need for your users to go searching for 
> the information on other sites, since the very moment they do that they 
> enter the name- confusion maze and then a large amount of them are lost...

Of course, any help with improving the docs is always welcome. 
Unfortunately, writing good docs is not always a strong side of the code 
hackers. While I think PHP manual documents functions available 
reasonably well, every improvement that can be done to it is most welcome.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
stas@zend.com   http://www.zend.com/
(408)253-8829   MSN: stas@zend.com