up vote 9 down vote favorite

Tags on this site will likely include:

...and others like this. Maybe it's just my eyes, but at the standard zoom level the diifference between lowercase T and lowercase F is hard to read. The following are much nicer:

enter image description here

(Edit: Have to submit as a picture, because capitalized tags only work in preview, before they're connected to the existing, broken ones. Curses!)

I understand that there's a war on uppercase letters on the SE platform, but I like to capitalize my acronyms. Many tags are acronyms. Therefore, I'd like my tags to be able to be capitalized.

share
@Jonas - Fixed. They're correct in the source, and in preview... – Kevin Vermeer Aug 18 '11 at 0:38
Ok. Anyway, I +1'ed the question already, I think uppercase acronyms are better - DCT I understand immediately, dct makes me wonder about a typo initially. – Jonas Aug 18 '11 at 0:52
1  
+1, it would definitely look more professional. – user42 Aug 18 '11 at 7:19
Or you know, simply don't use a tag for every small variation of the same topic? – Ivo Flipse Aug 18 '11 at 10:28
2  
@Ivo All of these tags have very different uses, I don't think it is at all the case that it is small variations of the same topic. The last DSP class that I took easily took 2+ weeks on each item on its own. – Kellenjb Aug 18 '11 at 12:57
Then wouldn't a better tagging scheme be the use-case, rather than every specific method to get there? – Ivo Flipse Aug 18 '11 at 13:14
@Robert - That answer solves the synonyms problem by mapping all capitalization schemes to all lowercase. I'm not suggesting we go completely case-sensitive, just that we map to the capitalization scheme given on the official page for the tag instead of all-lowercase. – Kevin Vermeer Aug 22 '11 at 17:25

2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

While I completely agree that upper case tags will make life easier for us here, I'm very certain that this will be . For example, , , etc., have existed on StackOverflow for 3 years now, although people would've preferred they be capitalized. Tags are made lowercase uniformly to standardize them. Else you'll end up with [DTFT], [dtFt], [dtft], etc.

In the end, at least in my opinion, this is a very minor issue. Just as how one uses functions named fft, dct etc., in lower case in MATLAB, and still know what they mean, we'll get used to the lower case tags. It's after all the content that matters.

However, a bigger problem that I see is that tags are restricted to 25 chars. I would much rather have than . However, the former is 26 chars and won't fit. It certainly can get confusing (and lead to mistagging due to typos) with all the ctft, dtft, dft, etc., being thrown around. Again, requests to increase tag length have been denied before, so we'll have to live with that too.

share
2  
Regarding ending up with multiple versions, it wouldn't be necessary to make tags case-sensitive. Just specify how some tags are displayed, e.g. fft as all-uppercase. – user42 Aug 18 '11 at 7:20
@yoda - Else you'll end up with what? They all look the same to me. You need to take a screenshot of the preview to show what I think you want to show. However, I doubt that we'll end up with the situation I think you're describing; we can use the tag synonyms feature to standardize the capitalization. – Kevin Vermeer Aug 18 '11 at 13:14
Also, the first link says When naming a tag, think about how someone would google that subject. In most cases this means typing out the full name, but you may also want to use the abbreviation. For example, "css" is probably more appropriate than "cascading-style-sheets". which is a counterpoint to your last paragraph. – Kevin Vermeer Aug 18 '11 at 13:16
@KevinVermeer Uh, I didn't notice that it didn't render as I wanted in the final, although it showed correctly in the preview (now I see why you used an image for the second one). As to your second point, css is probably an isolated case there. Here we have dft,cft,ctft,dtft, dct all of which only differ by a letter or two. So that CSS example is not applicable here. – Lorem Ipsum Aug 18 '11 at 13:54
In any case, I've tried my luck at TL and have gotten a "very unlikely [to be implemented]". – Lorem Ipsum Aug 18 '11 at 13:57
@Yoda - Along with a suggestion that we make tags ALL UPPERCASE ALL THE TIME. lol. Anyway, the discussion starts here if any other mods want to read it. – Kevin Vermeer Aug 18 '11 at 14:27
up vote 2 down vote

I will point out part of what Yoda was saying. The solution is not using acronyms in my mind. Make a synonym for your acronym! The users can use the acronym they are used to and we can all see it typed out without the exhausting work of typing it out.

Now the not fitting part, I am not sure what to say there, we need to approach tags somehow for that and adjust the tag in a standard way.

share
Though I'm almost loathe to type it, changing transform to xform solves the fitting problem if nothing else presents itself. – Stephen Aug 18 '11 at 14:24
2  
You are not the only one that loathes that solution. – Kortuk Aug 18 '11 at 14:25

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged