Re: [mmox] mmox Digest, Vol 1, Issue 113

[Ann Otoole <[e-mail]>]

From: Jon Watte <[e-mail]> Btw: nobody has told me what "rez" actually stands for, and why that word would be better to use than just "instantiate."

We will have to tie you to a chair and force you to watch Tron till you get the idea.
:)

Odds are excellent that more and more Second Life customers and
businesses will begin participating here using the SL jargon as more and
more Second Life customers and businesses are made aware of this
mailing list. This is a near certainty.

Abstraction, which means hiding irrelevant details, is a central theme in Computer Science.

"Rez" is an abstraction. 

"Rez" is one syllable word and is an acronym of sorts related to resolve as in resolve to the graphics card the appearance of an object of some sort.
Instantiate is another word with more syllables that has a definition in the dictionary. Invoked is another possible object oriented jargon candidate.

Jon will now "rez" a prim that has a script in it and then click the prim to cause the script to trigger it's on_touch() event.
Jon will now instantiate a 3D mesh, apply a texture bake, and then invoke it's methods to...

Same thing.

How is this: There are millions of people that use the colloquial slang word rez to mean what your use of your formal word instantiate means.
I'm confident we can tie our efforts up with arguments over acronyms and jargon if that is the purpose of the effort.

Nothing stopping anyone from creating an acronym cross reference as one of several necessary appendices though.

Bottom Line: Instantiate is in the dictionary. However it is possible "rez" will be in wikipedia before too long thus formalizing it as acceptable to the programmer generation.