Nomenclature for Channel Access to be used in EPICS V4 documents

[Greg W. <gr...@sl...>]

Andrew, Ralph,

A bit of background before the inevitable request:

Marty uses the phrase "channel access" to mean not only the proper noun labelling the 
protocol and implementation of the wire communications used in EPICS V3, but also 
the simple noun and verb - the action of accessing a channel. Notably he uses it 
this way regardless of protocol - that is, channel access may be done using pvAccess. 

Also, in our recent documentation on V3 V4 interop, he disambiguates the noun 
"channel access" from the proper noun indicating the protocol of V3, by the abbreviation 
CAV3, which drives Ralph nuts, because Ralph says CA is at version V4. We agreed 
this has to be disambiguated. 

As an aside: Marty is surprised by CA being at v4, because he thought the 
agreed standard in EPICS was to be that the major revision number of the protocol 
implementation would go with protocol design, not merely implementation version number; 
and also that wire protocol version number and overall platform version number 
would be kept in agreement.

So, we're going to fix our documentation to help new users with what's what.

Request: 

1. could you suggest names that should be used, particularly for the proper
noun phrase identifying the protocol (as distinct from its implementation) used in 
EPICS V3. 
1.1 what long name should be used to indicate the implementation of this protocol?

2. What short name can be used in EPICS V4 documents to indicate the proper noun? 
That is, what should replace "CAV3"? 

3. Is it ok for the simple noun "channel access" (with lower case 'c' and 'a') to 
continue to be used to indicate the action. Maybe it'll be clear enough in documents
if we include glossary sections. I hope readers in other languages will not hate that too
much. What do you think?

Here's my stab at it so you can correct it:
Action noun: channel access 
Name of protocol for doing channel access in V3: Channel Access
Name of implementation of protocol used in V3: Channel Access
Short name of implementation of protocol used in V3: CA

What should these be? 

Cheers
Greg