On Tue, 7 Jan 1997, add rabbit to Subject: line to override spamgard{tm} wrote:
Back in the old days when an identifier in source code wasn't allowed
to contain more than six or eight characters or so, often the word
"procedure" would be included in such an identifier by abbreviating it
as PROC, which we pronounced "prock".
It is only natural, therefore, for me to say "prockmail". But I've
heard someone else say "prossmail".
Well, I've never heard of it called prossmail, I've always heard
it called prockmail. Of course it probally doesn't help that everyone
that I talk to about it had never heard of it until I brought it up, and
they heard me call it prockmail. So take that as you will.
I just ran a BoF (informal face to face gathering) at
USENix on the subject. About half of the attendees of
that meeting were procmail users and only a few had never
heard of it. None of them chose to correct my pronunciation
(hard 'c' -- as in "prock..."). (attendees did correct
me on several other points during the course of the talk --
so it certainly wasn't timidity).
I also discussed the subject with numerous people all over
the show throughout the course of the week. They all use
the hard 'c'.
I've also been an active member of a number of Linux and
Unix oriented social groups all over the SF Bay Area and
the US Pacific Coast (from L.A. to Oregon) -- and the
hard 'c' pronunciation is consistently used throughout
all of these venues (many of which knew of it long before
I did).
We could certainly defer to the decision of Stephen --
if he chooses to speak up on the issue. Until then I'll
stick with the hard 'c' pronunciation which clearly
dominates the technical experts I'm likely to work and
socialize with.
Jim Dennis,
Starshine Technical Services