Am 22.06.18 um 09:16 schrieb Will Robertson: > On 22 Jun 2018, at 5:54 am, David Kastrup<[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> A stupid question that just occured to me: should we be discouraging >> registering prefixes that match another prefix' contribution to the >> overly simplistic hash function used in almost all TeX engines? > Would it be easier to update the hash function in the engines?:) > What would be the easiest way to test for clashes? No change I would think, but does it really matter in all honesty? However, we should perhaps be in general more selective in what we accept instead of a first come first get approach. For example, if somebody would register "array" for some tiny improvement package we should probably object, or in general we should take a hard look at anything that is potentially a useful prefix for the kernel level, we maybe we should very clearly urge the developers to do that same, i.e., ask themselves, is that prefix really covering just the space I like to cover, or is it much broader and I possibly freeze up a useful name for a general prefix without ever intending to cover that space. E.g., siunitx is fine (not because it is from a package of JW :-) but because that package is the dominant package for that space and exhaustive, same with mhchem as it uses the developers initials, but if somebody adds another argument specifier for array columns in a package and uses the prefix "array" for somebody asks for "math", etc that it wouldn't do, imho. very short abbreviations are perhaps not good too if there is some likelyhood that the sort name is useful one day for a more general purpose. (We do have a small number of those already in l3prefixes) So something like "statistics" is perhaps not good either unless it is intended for a full coverage of the statistics space... and it might be better to have this called jrstat --- clearly depends, but we should probably go into that direction and not accept such prefixes or at least get back to the developers with a big question mark frank