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Talk:Glossary of French words and expressions in English

Dubious introduction
The introduction claims

There are many words of French origin in English, such as art, collage, competition, force, machine, police, publicity, role, routine, table, and many others which have been and are being Anglicised.

This claim is dubious, bordering on the outright wrong: While these words may all have come to English via French, they are not all of French origin. "Art", e.g., goes back at least to Latin in the similar form "ars" (with a "t" in some conjugated forms, "ars gratia artis", whatnot), "collage" has a Greek root, "competition" is again Latin, ...

In addition, I am far from certain that these words were all even imported from French (but do not rule it out, out of hand): Other roads, e.g. German or Dutch would be conceivable, while some words may have been picked directly from Latin or Greek. (And even those who were not, may have been known in their original form among educated English speakers, as was certainly "ars".)

I would suggest a re-write to either reduce the list to words that are indisputably French or to re-phrase it to speak of words imported from French (again reduced to those who actually took that road).

In addition, it can be argued that the beginning of the introduction is superfluous, and I would not mind seeing it removed or reduced so that we jump directly to the matter of the article. Michael Eriksson (talk) 15:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

- - - - - Maybe the author of this introduction meant that, from a historical point of view, many common English words do come from old French, although this dates back to William the Conqueror (1066!). Indeed, I do not see what this has to do with this list, since both language have changed since then. Anyway, being French myself, I am surprised to see so many French words said to be part of common English vocabulary. I usually notice when they are used (even with an awful pronunciation, you can tell French from English :) ). Are the contributors of this page REALLY sure that all are really commonly used words? Elisheva 15:10, 29 june 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.167.91.193 (talk)
 * You are trying to explain away the civet cat while drinking kopi luwak coffee. Yes it's coffee, and yes it's also poop. 83.101.79.22 (talk)

En masse
"En masse" is a common English phrase that derives from French that is not mentioned in the article -93.97.122.93 (talk) 03:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Venue
These days venue is used to represent a location rather than a person, so at least add this definition? Natcarish (talk) 21:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

beaucoup
Sorry, I do not know how to edit the main page, but I wanted to say that "beaucoup" (in the sense of "beaucoup money") is not used only or mainly in New Orleans; it's used all across southern Louisiana (the French, i.e. Cajun/Creole part). I was born and raised in Lake Charles, LA, and it's a phrase I have used and heard used around me all my life. So please remove the emphasis on New Orleans because that really makes no sense. Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Lake Charles are just as French as NOLA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.112.60.71 (talk) 22:10, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Qui-vive
From the Trésors de la langue française :

Certaines des 1res attest. (cf. aussi Rec. gén. des Sotties, t. 3, p. 201) indiquent nettement la signif. de cette loc. interj. servant à demander à un inconnu de quel parti il était (A. Thomas ds Romania t. 44, p. 101 à la suite de Clédat ds Rev. de Philol. fr. et prov., t. 9, p. 233, cf. aussi M. Roques ds Romania t. 47, p. 137). L'hyp., plus conforme à la compréhension actuelle de l'expr. interprétant qui vive? « qui est là vivant? y a-t-il âme qui vive? » (A. Jeanroy ds Romania t. 37, pp. 294-296) supposerait que '''l'interprétation qui transparaît dans les premières attest. soit déjà le résultat d'une fausse étymologie'''. Fréq. abs. littér.: 53.

The definition is : "Interrogation criée par une sentinelle pour sommer toute personne de se faire reconnaître".. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.66.139.96 (talk) 17:24, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Alphabetical order
Make an effort to list items in alphabetical order. French has the same lexical order as English and Wikipedia does not automatically sort.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 03:58, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Ordering of photographs
Is there any way to tag photographs so they consistently appear near the term they refer to? Many of the photographs now appear several screenfulls (many dozens of entries) away, and a couple photographs appear to refer to terms that appear to be no longer listed. Hersbruck (talk) 23:05, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Removing examples
Until we get a better definition of what this page is actually for, I think the anonymous's suggested test of "If a child asks what it means, would you say "It means X", or would you say "It's French for X" (or "It means X. It's French")" is a good one. Based on that, I would suggest removing the following:
 * ballet, bric-a-brac, brunette, café, charlatan, chauffeur, cliché, fiancé/e, genre, Grenadier, omelette, papier-mâché, piste, reconnaissance, renaissance, retard, reservoir, rôle (depending on whether you use the accent or not), sabotage, saboteur, silhouette.
 * Possibly also: bouquet, bourgeois, cache, Grand Prix, lamé. mousse, pince-nez.

Having written all those out, it occurs to me that a slightly more inclusive test would be to include words for which "it's French" would be a reasonable response to someone saying "huh - that's a funny spelling!", but even then, a lot of the above should be removed. (Unless we change this article to "English words of French origin that are spelt the same in both languages". But that would be retarded ;) ). Wardog (talk) 10:57, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree, although I don't necessarily agree with all of your examples. I think if a word has an acute or grave accent, it should probably be listed, seeing as they aren't generally used in standard English. I take issue with the selection of some words based on how long they've been used in English. For example, why is "foible" listed? An (admittedly) quick web search shows that it's been in use in English since about 1640, and comes from an obsolete spelling of the French word "faible". If a word that has been used in English for almost 400 years(and isn't even used in modern French in its English spelling) is going to be in the list, we're going to have to add thousands more. English has been absorbing French words since 1066, it's ridiculous to attempt to list all of them. I tend to agree with Wardog's spelling test; i.e. if a word would be read as French by an English speaker and/or French speaker, then it should be in the list. --Phanmo (talk) 20:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirect
A redirect page to this page was tagged for speedy delete due to improper Redirection, however was sorted later. Karthik Nadar (talk) 14:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Additions to the page?
Is there a process of review for adding words to this page? Off the top of my head:
 * cuisine - kitchen, cooking.
 * mille feuille - literaly, "thousand leaves", a form of pastry.
 * accoutrement - fashion accessory.
 * voici - "Here is", complements "voila" - "there is".
 * c'est la guerre - that's war, typicall used to justify something outrageous that would not be acceptable in peactime.
 * duvet (pronounced slightly differently in English) (QuentinB88 (talk) 10:16, 6 August 2013 (UTC))

Old_Wombat (talk) 12:10, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

 * Protip: Just add them next time. Not it. Noes goes. Travürsa (talk) 21:07, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Does table d'hôte belong in section T or in the Not used as such in French section? (Je ne parle pas français.)— Robert Greer (talk) 23:22, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

It's used in French, but has a different meaning if I'm not mistaken. So it should be in the second section? (QuentinB88 (talk) 10:16, 6 August 2013 (UTC))

I agree that c'est la guerre would be a valuable addition. Possibly the others, too. However, I do not have sufficient French skills at this time to add them to the appropriate section of this article. Hersbruck (talk) 23:01, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

 * Should be added, imo. Tony (talk) 14:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Quelle connerie
What a dreadful mess of an article. Nothing should be included here unless it can be attested in both English and French. Such references should be extremely easy to find in the modern age. I've taken out some of the worst crap from the A-D sections; it would be great if others could lend a hand. --John (talk) 20:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've removed around 20% of the content as flagrantly not meeting the terms of the article. The whole thing still seems a little WP:OR to me with so few references. --John (talk) 06:47, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

False Redirect: In Lieu
Typing "in lieu" in the search bar took me to this page, yet this page doesn't even have this example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.7.35 (talk) 19:30, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a hybrid phrase, part English and part French, so I'm not sure if it is within the scope of the list, but I've been bold and added it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:38, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

à la mode
I don't think that "à la mode" has to mean "trendy" when used in French--it could mean the same as the literal (?) translation, as in the Norman tripe dish, Tripes à la mode de Caen. Yes?--Hjal (talk) 05:05, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

It's sometimes used for food like you said, but also used in a more literal way to simply say something (usually clothing) is trendy. "C'est très à la mode!" means it's very trendy, and it's a very common sentence. (QuentinB88 (talk) 10:23, 6 August 2013 (UTC))

 * As of September 2014, this phrase is listed in the section "Used in English and French" and also in the section "Not used as such in French". The two overlapping entries should be consolidated into a single listing.  Reify-tech (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

eau de cologne
'Cologne at that time being under the control of France.' If this means direct political control, it's wrong. Cultural, economic and political ties were strong, and French had become the lingua franca in large parts of Europe. But, at that time, the city was as much under French control as it is now under American control. 130.83.197.163 (talk) 07:48, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Coup d'état
Coup d'état should be added, it's French for a blow/strike to the State/Government.

When a government gets overthrown...any thoughts? Cboy619 (talk) 13:03, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

 * Agree! I first heard the expression in an history lesson at prep' school.
 * -- Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk) 13:18, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

 * What a mess of an article this is! It seems you are not supposed to make an addition if the term is included in another section of the article.  For instance, Coup d'état is already in the section labelled, "Not used as such in French".  Another IP has reverted the editing by 64.128.214.129 (talk), which I reinstated, only to have it reverted, again by the same IP.
 * This article is not 'user-friendly' and needs a major overhaul.
 * Sincerely, -- Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk) 14:08, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

 * Oh! I didn't see that down there, thanks for clarifying/ correcting...should've known that was somewhere in the article.  Cboy619  (talk)14:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

 * My pleasure. Good editing!  Gareth Griffith-Jones  (GG-J's Talk page) 20:03, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Gendarmes
I see from the discussion that there has been quite a bit of discussion about including and removing words. I don't know of **gendarmes** was ever on the list and got the chop at some point, but if that is the case, a photo of **gendarmes** was left in the article. regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 19:04, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Not just English - chacun à son goût
The expression chacun à son goût is not used only in English, e.g., it is the title of a song in Franz Lehár's Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow). Should the text of Not used as such in French; be more general? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:57, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Category:French loanwords
Category:French loanwords was taken to CFD, and the result was essentially "delete after putting it into a list". The list is now at Talk:List of French words and phrases used by English speakers/French loanwords; please go there to improve it. Nyttend (talk) 01:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Marquee
Is "marquee" reaaly derived from marquise? Because "marquée" in French (also) means "written" which makes sense in this context... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.231.133.165 (talk) 20:02, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

my contribution
As a frenchman living in the US, I made a few changes:

- added: amateur, boulevard, chateau, chef, cordon bleu, cuisine

- removed: haute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine

Thanks, Damien

edit: i'm new to this site, can someone tell me why 2 days after half of the words I added were removed????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.195.66.2 (talk) 18:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Probably because several of them (amateur, boulevard, chef) have been considered standard English words for quite some time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phanmo (talk • contribs) 12:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

About the page's recent renaming
If "avant la lettre" is an expression, a phrase, on the other hand "baguette" is a word, a term. Since the page contains a list of both French terms and phrases used by English speakers, I don't see why "expressions", ie phrases, should be substituted for "terms and phrases". The title should be "List of French terms and phrases in English". --Elnon (talk) 07:44, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

 * Hi. The Free Dictionary defines expression as "5. A particular word or phrase". The current title is fine, by this definition. But if a renaming is agreed upon, I just ask to also do the same for the German list, so as to keep a standard. —capmo (talk) 17:40, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Dead-end redirect.
The phrase "quel dommage" redirects to this page, but is not found in this article. Authors, please restrain yourselves from redirecting when doing so provides no pay-off by ignoring the information sought. Thank you, Wordreader (talk) 15:19, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Definition of ennui is weak.
To say that ennui means boredom (as in: "Mom! The battery in the TV clicker is dead! I'm bored!!!) is a weak and incomplete definition. It's far more complex an idea. The definition on the ennui page strikes closer to the mark:

"A gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom; depression."

But on the citation page for the word, the meaning that encompasses the draining melancholia, a soul-deep emptiness, and the inability to connect to life is underscored:

1990 — Terry Pratchett, Eric, p 165

Now and again screams of ennui rose from between the potted plants, but mainly there was the terrible numbing silence of the human brain being reduced to cream cheese from the inside out."

1997 — Terrance Dicks, The Eight Doctors, p 256

''It was also known as ennui, the megrims, the blues, or the black dog. But whatever the name, the symptoms were always the same: listlessness, boredom, a sense that life was ultimately meaningless and futile, without point or purpose.''

Thank you, Wordreader (talk) 15:56, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

 * That was a fast consensus! Thank you, Reify-tech, Wordreader (talk) 04:44, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Corrected Entree
Entree evolving to mean the main dish in a meal instead of the first dish is an Americanism. Elsewhere in the English speaking world it retains its French meaning of the first or starter dish. I've corrected the entry to reflect this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.32.105.112 (talk) 02:37, 31 December 2014 (UTC) That may be original research. The "main dish" usage is common in Scotland. Almonaster (talk) 06:08, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

cinq à sept
Extraconjugal affair between five and seven pm. In French, though it can also mean this, it primarily means any relaxing time with friends between the end of work and the beginning of the marital obligations. As a French native speaker (and deep lover of French language, for that matter), I respectfully disagree: no one in France would ever use/understand it otherwise than in the "extraconjugal affair" meaning.--78.249.192.37 (talk) 02:01, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Canapé
Added. From the discussion above, I think this belongs in, but others may disagree. What I'm not sure of is whether the term is used in the same sense in French. It is also used as a technical term in the game of bridge, but I didn't think that usage was sufficiently notable for inclusion.Almonaster (talk) 06:08, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Outdated redirects
Here is a list of redirects to this page from terms that aren't mentioned in the article (from here):

 * Avez vous
 * C'est bon
 * C'est la mode
 * C'est la mode.
 * C'est magnifique
 * C'est magnifique!
 * Chateaux En Espagne
 * Chateaux en Espagne
 * Châteaux en Espagne
 * Chevalier d'Industrie
 * C’est tout
 * Gautier and Garguille
 * Quel dommage

Any ideas how this should be handled? If any of them are worth mentioning again the article they should be, or else alternate redirect targets will have to be found or the redirect deleted. Opencooper (talk) 13:30, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

"Adieu"
This has been a legitimate English word for centuries. Read the opening sentences of the lead. This article is NOT about English words of French origin (if it was it would cover half the language for heaven's sake. -Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:36, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I believe 'adieu' does belong in this list for a few reasons:
 * the word still retains a strong 'french' character. It still looks odd as an english word.
 * people still have a hard time pronouncing it, or asking how to pronouce it, indicating that they recognize it as a french word, unlike 'table', 'competition' or 'art'.
 * it still hasn't been englicized like the words money (from monnaie), beef (from boeuf) or mutton (from mouton).
 * the fact that it has been part of the english vocabulary for centuries is irrelevant. it is still perceived as a foreign word by most people.
 * I believe that the revert by user:Compassionate727 was an improvement, and your addition of the awkward and ambiguous phrase "A few of them were never "good" French in the first place" wasn't. Dhrm77 (talk) 12:18, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Bump. has accurately articulated my same thoughts, for which I was lacking words earlier. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 12:59, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with Compassionate727 that the word should be included. Opencooper (talk) 23:28, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It has a "normal" English plural (as in "I made my adieus to everyone")
 * It has a "normal" English pronunciation ("add you") - one occasionally hears "add yer" - this is widely regarded as an ignorant affectation, and in any case is nearly as far from the proper French
 * It is common in popular songs (going back to eighteenth century London street ballads) - almost always rhymed with "you" or "blue", or "(un)true" - the (Websters) dictionary gives its modern use as "formal /literary" but even that does not make it any more "French".
 * If it has become a little less common in daily speech, or if is more common outside the United States this does NOT make it one whit more "foreign" much less specifically "French" (in the sense of this article)
 * Most people I know are certainly aware of its French origin (especially if they happen to have a little French from their high school days) BUT that in itself is quite beside the point - there are literally thousands of words in this category. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:12, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

 * If the "ambiguous phrase" (it's actually a short sentence) "A few of them were never "good" French in the first place" wasn't clear, or unambiguous - then rewriting it to be clearer rather than deleting it would be the way to go? Or am I incorrectly assuming "common sense"? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:35, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
 * To the second comment, yes, but I personally am not sure what the writer means by it. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 18:44, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Are you serious? I have always assumed that it got reverted in the first place primarily because you wanted to put "adieu" back in and they were on the same edit. Sorry if I was wrong and there is genuine confusion here. But to assume good faith, which I should have done in the first place perhaps.

 * Read in total isolation we may be confused about what "they" are ("French phrases") but in the context of the other sentences of the paragraph the pronoun suffices, surely it is plain enough. "French" is (or used to be) considered much more sophisticated than English, and people who wanted to impress with their sophistication would lard their speech with what they imagined was French but sometimes wasn't really at all, or was French, but actually didn't mean what the ignorant English speaker imagined it did. Or (the point of the sentence in question) was French, of a sort, but not "good" French (containing basic grammatical errors, for instance). As I keep saying - if the sentence seems ambiguous or out of place then by all means rewrite it! We don't delete articles (or sections, paragraphs or sentences) because we don't understand them (on those grounds there are many articles I would delete altogether because they are right over my head!) Generally, it is bad policy to edit anything you don't understand - I leave such articles (for me, they are legion) well alone - unless I need to consult them to improve my own (very patchy) knowledge. There are other editors out there who know more than I (or you!) do about all kinds of things - otherwise, obviously, Wikipedia wouldn't work at all. -Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:54, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, that was my confusion. I wasn't sure if "not good" meant incorrect, profane, obscure, or some other thing. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 14:57, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 * A bit of all of those things, at times, but mainly grammatically incorrect, or poor idiom, or just "not how a Frenchman would put it". Same things as when we talk about "bad" English. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:18, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

NOT a dictionary of "French words in English"
If we are to have a list like this in Wikipedia at all (and I sometimes have my doubts - it MUST be restricted to "French" words and phrases that are sometimes used by English speakers (usually instead of a perfectly good English one really, but that is another question. If you wanted to include English words with a French origin you'd have the equivalent of a very thick dictionary indeed - nearly half of the vocabulary of English is derived from French at some level. Please read the lead paragraphs to the article BEFORE adding examples of English that you have just realised are the same, or spelled the same, or even vaguely resemble French words, or what you imagine are French words. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 12:37, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

 * Actually this list is riddled with quite ordinary English words that need to be wiped!! I have picked up a few - but someone really needs to go right through! Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:13, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Aide-de-camp
This example appears in the "Used in English and French" and "Found only in English." I am unfamiliar with french expressions so I don't know which instance needs to be removed.24.224.230.47 (talk) 17:33, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

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Original research
Many items listed here are without any citation or other justification. Per Wikipedia's core policy of WP:Verifiability, anything not supported by a citation to a reliable source may be challenged and removed. Per WP:UNSOURCED: "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source."

While the use of Wiktionary can be useful, Wiktionary may not be used as a reference or citation to verify an assertion in the article, because it is a self-published source, and per WP:WINARS. Any item sourced solely to Wiktionary, should be removed. Mathglot (talk)
 * Looking more in detail, the sourcing in this article is in terrible shape. Looking at just the "A's", every item in the A list would need to be removed, except for two: à la, and apéritif. The fact that there is massive violation of verifiability going on, doesn't somehow make it okay.  From what I can see, of the 34 items beginning with "A", 32 of them need to be deleted.  And so on, throughout the article.
 * Verifiability is not an optional policy, and must be adhered to. Mathglot (talk) 08:46, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Naïveté
Nothing to do with semantics or word usage, can someone unbold the text for the description, as I have failed to do so. Appreciate it Gelatoarcade (talk) 15:10, 11 October 2020 (UTC)Gelatoarcade

La description
I'm pretty sure description is La description. Most words in french ending in tion are "la" and I asked my dad, who is french and he said it was une or la Alefar (talk) 16:39, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

"FrenchLanguageInEnglish" listed at Redirects for discussion
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"Gautier and Garguille" listed at Redirects for discussion
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text:
Instant messaging

Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing immediate transmission of messages over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and triggers a transmission to the recipient(s), who are all connected on a common network. It differs from email in that conversations over instant messaging happen in real-time (hence "instant"). Most modern IM applications (sometimes called "social messengers", "messaging apps", "chat apps" or "chat clients") use push technology and also add other features such as emojis (or graphical smileys), file transfer, chatbots, voice over IP, or video chat capabilities.

Instant messaging systems tend to facilitate connections between specified known users (often using a contact list also known as a "buddy list" or "friend list"), and can be standalone applications or integrated into e.g. a wider social media platform, or a website where it can for instance be used for conversational commerce. IM can also consist of conversations in "chat rooms". Depending on the IM protocol, the technical architecture can be peer-to-peer (direct point-to-point transmission) or client–server (an IM service center retransmits messages from the sender to the communication device). It is usually distinguished from text messaging which is typically simpler and normally uses cellular phone networks.

Instant messaging applications can store messages with either local-based device storage (e.g. WhatsApp, Viber, Line, WeChat, Signal etc.) or cloud-based server storage (e.g. Telegram, Skype, Facebook Messenger, Google Meet/Chat, Discord, Slack etc.).

Instant messaging was pioneered in the early Internet era; the IRC protocol was the earliest to achieve wide adoption. Later in the 1990s, ICQ was among the first closed and commercialized instant messengers, and several rival services appeared afterwards as it became a popular use of the Internet. Beginning with its first introduction in 2005, BlackBerry Messenger, which initially had been available only on BlackBerry smartphones, soon became one of the most popular mobile instant messaging apps worldwide. BBM was for instance the most used mobile messaging app in the United Kingdom and Indonesia. Instant messaging remains very popular today; IM apps are the most widely used smartphone apps: in 2018 there were over 50 million Signal users, 980 million monthly active users of WeChat and 1.3 billion monthly users of WhatsApp Messenger.

Overview
Instant messaging is a set of communication technologies used for text-based communication between two (private messaging) or more (chat room) participants over the Internet or other types of networks (see also LAN messenger). IM chats happen in real-time. Online chat and instant messaging differ from other technologies such as email due to the perceived quasi-synchrony of the communications by the users, although some systems allow users to send offline messages that the other user receives when logging in.

IM allows effective and efficient communication, allowing immediate receipt of acknowledgment or reply. However IM is basically not necessarily supported by transaction control. In many cases, instant messaging includes added features which can make it even more popular. For example, users may see each other via webcams, or talk directly for free over the Internet using a microphone and headphones or loudspeakers. Many applications allow file transfers, although they are usually limited in the permissible file-size. It is usually possible to save a text conversation for later reference. Instant messages are often logged in a local message history, making it similar to the persistent nature of emails.

Major IM services are controlled by their corresponding companies. They usually follow the client–server model when all clients have to first connect to the central server. This requires users to trust this server because messages can generally be accessed by the company. Companies may be compelled to reveal their user's communication, and companies can also suspend user accounts for any reason.

Non-IM types of chat include multicast transmission, usually referred to as "chat rooms", where participants might be anonymous or might be previously known to each other (for example collaborators on a project that is using chat to facilitate communication).

An instant message service center (IMSC) is a network element in the mobile telephone network which delivers instant messages. When a user sends an IM message to another user, the phone sends the message to the IMSC. The IMSC stores the message and delivers it to the destination user when they are available. The IMSC usually has a configurable time limit for how long it will store the message. Few companies who make many of the IMSCs in use in the GSM world are Miyowa, Followap and OZ. Other players include Acision, Colibria, Ericsson, Nokia, Comverse Technology, Now Wireless, Jinny Software, Miyowa, Feelingk and few others.

The term "Instant Messenger" is a service mark of Time Warner and may not be used in software not affiliated with AOL in the United States. For this reason, in April 2007, the instant messaging client formerly named Gaim (or gaim) announced that they would be renamed "Pidgin".

Clients

Modern IM services generally provide their own client, either a separately installed piece of software, or a browser-based client. They are normally centralised networks run by the servers of the platform's operators, unlike peer-to-peer protocols like XMPP. These usually only work within the same IM network, although some allow limited function with other services. Third party client software applications exist that will connect with most of the major IM services. There is the class of instant messengers that uses the serverless model, which doesn't require servers, and the IM network consists only of clients. There are several serverless messengers: RetroShare, Tox, Bitmessage, Ricochet, Ring.

Some examples of popular IM services today include Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp Messenger, WeChat, QQ Messenger, Viber, Line, and Snapchat. The popularity of certain apps greatly differ between different countries. Certain apps have emphasis on certain uses - for example Skype focuses on video calling, Slack focuses on messaging and file sharing for work teams, and Snapchat focuses on image messages. Some social networking services offer messaging services as a component of their overall platform, such as Facebook's Facebook Messenger, who also own WhatsApp. Others have a direct messaging function as an additional adjunct component of their social networking platforms, like Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, Clubhouse and Twitter, either directly or through chat rooms.

Private and group messaging
Private chat allows private conversation with another person or a group. The privacy aspect can also be enhanced in a number of ways such as end to end encryption by default like Signal. Or some applications have a timer feature, like Snapchat, where messages, conversations or files such as photos are automatically deleted from the users phone once the time limit is reached. Public and group chat features allow users to communicate with multiple people at a time.

Calling
Many major IM services and applications offer the call feature for user-to-user calls, conference calls, and voice messages. The call functionality is useful for professionals who utilize the application for work purposes and as a hands-free method. Videotelephony using a webcam is also possible by some.

Games and entertainment
Some IM applications include in-app games for entertainment. Yahoo! Messenger for example introduced these where users could play a game and viewed by friends in real-time. The Messenger application has a built in option to play computer games with people in a chat, including games like Tetris and Blackjack.

Another popular messaging app that allows you to play games inside it is Discord. There are multiple games built inside the "activities" tab in voice channels.

Payments
Though a relatively new feature, peer-to-peer payments are available on major messaging platforms. This functionality allows individuals to use one application for both communication and financial tasks. The lack of a service fee also makes messaging apps advantageous to financial applications. Major platforms such as Facebook messenger and WeChat already offer a payment feature, and this functionality is likely to become a standard amongst IM apps competing in the market.

History
Though the term dates from the 1990s, instant messaging predates the Internet, first appearing on multi-user operating systems like Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) and Multiplexed Information and Computing Service (Multics) in the mid-1960s. Initially, some of these systems were used as notification systems for services like printing, but quickly were used to facilitate communication with other users logged into the same machine. CTSS facilitated communication via text message for up to 30 people.

Parallel to instant messaging were early online chat facilities, the earliest of which was Talkomatic (1973) on the PLATO system, which allowed 5 people to chat simultaneously on a 512 x 512 plasma display (5 lines of text + 1 status line per person). During the bulletin board system (BBS) phenomenon that peaked during the 1980s, some systems incorporated chat features which were similar to instant messaging; Freelancin' Roundtable was one prime example. The first such general-availability commercial online chat service (as opposed to PLATO, which was educational) was the CompuServe CB Simulator in 1980, created by CompuServe executive Alexander "Sandy" Trevor in Columbus, Ohio.

As networks developed, the protocols spread with the networks. Some of these used a peer-to-peer protocol (e.g. talk, ntalk and ytalk), while others required peers to connect to a server (see talker and IRC). The Zephyr Notification Service (still in use at some institutions) was invented at MIT's Project Athena in the 1980s to allow service providers to locate and send messages to users.

Early instant messaging programs were primarily real-time text, where characters appeared as they were typed. This includes the Unix "talk" command line program, which was popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. Some BBS chat programs (i.e. Celerity BBS) also used a similar interface. Modern implementations of real-time text also exist in instant messengers, such as AOL's Real-Time IM as an optional feature.

In the latter half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Quantum Link online service for Commodore 64 computers offered user-to-user messages between concurrently connected customers, which they called "On-Line Messages" (or OLM for short), and later "FlashMail." Quantum Link later became America Online and made AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, discussed later). While the Quantum Link client software ran on a Commodore 64, using only the Commodore's PETSCII text-graphics, the screen was visually divided into sections and OLMs would appear as a yellow bar saying "Message From:" and the name of the sender along with the message across the top of whatever the user was already doing, and presented a list of options for responding. As such, it could be considered a type of graphical user interface (GUI), albeit much more primitive than the later Unix, Windows and Macintosh based GUI IM software. OLMs were what Q-Link called "Plus Services" meaning they charged an extra per-minute fee on top of the monthly Q-Link access costs.

Modern, Internet-wide, GUI-based messaging clients as they are known today, began to take off in the mid-1990s with PowWow, ICQ, and AOL Instant Messenger. Similar functionality was offered by CU-SeeMe in 1992; though primarily an audio/video chat link, users could also send textual messages to each other. AOL later acquired Mirabilis, the authors of ICQ; establishing dominance in the instant messaging market. A few years later ICQ (then owned by AOL) was awarded two patents for instant messaging by the U.S. patent office. Meanwhile, other companies developed their own software; (Excite, MSN, Ubique, and Yahoo!), each with its own proprietary protocol and client; users therefore had to run multiple client applications if they wished to use more than one of these networks. In 1998, IBM released IBM Lotus Sametime, a product based on technology acquired when IBM bought Haifa-based Ubique and Lexington-based Databeam.

In 2000, an open-source application and open standards-based protocol called Jabber was launched. The protocol was standardized under the name Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). XMPP servers could act as gateways to other IM protocols, reducing the need to run multiple clients. Multi-protocol clients can use any of the popular IM protocols by using additional local libraries for each protocol. IBM Lotus Sametime's November 2007 release added IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway support for XMPP.

Video calling using a webcam also started taking off during this time. Microsoft NetMeeting was one of the earliest, but Skype released in 2003 was one of the first that focused on this features and brought it to a wider audience.

By 2006, AIM controlled 52 percent of the instant messaging market, but rapidly declined shortly thereafter as the company struggled to compete with other services. By 2010, instant messaging over the Web was in sharp decline in favor of messaging features on social networks. Social networking providers often offer IM abilities, for example Facebook Chat, while Twitter can be thought of as a Web 2.0 instant messaging system. Similar server-side chat features are part of most dating websites, such as OkCupid or Plenty of Fish. The former most popular IM platforms were terminated in later years, such as AIM.

The popularity of instant messaging was soon revived with new services in the form of mobile applications, notable examples of the time being BlackBerry Messenger (first released in 2005; today available as BlackBerry Messenger Enterprise) and  WhatsApp (first released in 2009). Unlike previous IM applications, these newer ones usually ran only on mobile devices and coincided with the rising popularity of Internet-enabled smartphones; this led to IM surpassing SMS in message volume by 2013. By 2014, IM had more users than social networks. In January 2015, the service WhatsApp alone accommodated 30 billion messages daily in comparison to about 20 billion for SMS.

In 2016, Google introduced a new intelligent messaging app that incorporated machine learning technology called Allo. Google Allo was shut down on March 12, 2019.

Interoperability

Standard complementary instant messaging applications offer functions like file transfer, contact list(s), the ability to hold several simultaneous conversations, etc. These may be all the functions that a small business needs, but larger organizations will require more sophisticated applications that can work together. The solution to finding applications capable of this is to use enterprise versions of instant messaging applications. These include titles like XMPP, Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office Communicator, etc., which are often integrated with other enterprise applications such as workflow systems. These enterprise applications, or enterprise application integration (EAI), are built to certain constraints, namely storing data in a common format.

There have been several attempts to create a unified standard for instant messaging: IETF's Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE), Application Exchange (APEX), Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (IMPP), the open XML-based Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), and Open Mobile Alliance's Instant Messaging and Presence Service developed specifically for mobile devices.

Most attempts at producing a unified standard for the major IM providers (AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft) have failed, and each continues to use its own proprietary protocol.

However, while discussions at IETF were stalled, Reuters signed the first inter-service provider connectivity agreement in September 2003. This agreement enabled AIM, ICQ and MSN Messenger users to talk with Reuters Messaging counterparts and vice versa. Following this, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL agreed to a deal in which Microsoft's Live Communications Server 2005 users would also have the possibility to talk to public instant messaging users. This deal established SIP/SIMPLE as a standard for protocol interoperability and established a connectivity fee for accessing public instant messaging groups or services. Separately, on October 13, 2005, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that by the 3rd quarter of 2006 they would interoperate using SIP/SIMPLE, which was followed, in December 2005, by the AOL and Google strategic partnership deal in which Google Talk users would be able to communicate with AIM and ICQ users provided they have an AIM account.

There are two ways to combine the many disparate protocols:
 * Combine the many disparate protocols inside the IM client application.
 * Combine the many disparate protocols inside the IM server application. This approach moves the task of communicating with the other services to the server. Clients need not know or care about other IM protocols. For example, LCS 2005 Public IM Connectivity. This approach is popular in XMPP servers; however, the so-called transport projects suffer the same reverse engineering difficulties as any other project involved with closed protocols or formats.

Some approaches allow organizations to deploy their own, private instant messaging network by enabling them to restrict access to the server (often with the IM network entirely behind their firewall) and administer user permissions. Other corporate messaging systems allow registered users to also connect from outside the corporation LAN, by using an encrypted, firewall-friendly, HTTPS-based protocol. Usually, a dedicated corporate IM server has several advantages, such as pre-populated contact lists, integrated authentication, and better security and privacy.

Certain networks have made changes to prevent them from being used by such multi-network IM clients. For example, Trillian had to release several revisions and patches to allow its users to access the MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! networks, after changes were made to these networks. The major IM providers usually cite the need for formal agreements, and security concerns as reasons for making these changes.

The use of proprietary protocols has meant that many instant messaging networks have been incompatible and users have been unable to reach users on other networks. This may have allowed social networking with IM-like features and text messaging an opportunity to gain market share at the expense of IM.

In 2022, the European Union passed the Digital Markets Act, which largely came into effect in early 2023. Among other things, the legislation mandates certain interoperability between the largest messaging platforms in use in Europe.

Effects of IM on communication
Messaging applications have affected the way people communicate on their devices. A survey conducted by MetrixLabs showed that 63% of Baby Boomers, 63% of Generation X, and 67% of Generation Y said that they used messaging applications in place of texting. A Facebook survey showed that 65% of people surveyed thought that messaging applications made group messaging easier.

Effects on workplace communication
Messaging applications have also changed how people communicate in the workplace. Enterprise messaging applications like Slack, TeleMessage, Teamnote and Yammer allow companies to enforce policies on how employees message at work and ensure secure storage of sensitive data. Message applications allow employees to separate work information from their personal emails and texts.

Messaging applications may make workplace communication efficient, but they can also have consequences on productivity. A study at Slack showed on average, people spend 10 hours a day on Slack, which is about 67% more time than they spend using email.

Instant messaging is implemented in many video-conferencing tools. A study of chat use during work-related videoconferencing found that chat during meetings allows participants to communicate without interrupting the meeting, plan action around common resources, and enables greater inclusion. The study also found that chat can cause distractions and information asymmetries between participants.

IM language
Users sometimes make use of internet slang or text speak to abbreviate common words or expressions to quicken conversations or reduce keystrokes. The language has become widespread, with well-known expressions such as 'lol' translated over to face-to-face language.

Emotions are often expressed in shorthand, such as the abbreviation LOL, BRB and TTYL; respectively laugh(ing) out loud, be right back, and talk to you later.

Some, however, attempt to be more accurate with emotional expression over IM. Real time reactions such as (chortle) (snort) (guffaw) or (eye-roll) are becoming more popular. Also there are certain standards that are being introduced into mainstream conversations including, '#' indicates the use of sarcasm in a statement and '*' which indicates a spelling mistake and/or grammatical error in the prior message, followed by a correction.

Business application
Instant messaging has proven to be similar to personal computers, email, and the World Wide Web, in that its adoption for use as a business communications medium was driven primarily by individual employees using consumer software at work, rather than by formal mandate or provisioning by corporate information technology departments. Tens of millions of the consumer IM accounts in use are being used for business purposes by employees of companies and other organizations.

In response to the demand for business-grade IM and the need to ensure security and legal compliance, a new type of instant messaging, called "Enterprise Instant Messaging" ("EIM") was created when Lotus Software launched IBM Lotus Sametime in 1998. Microsoft followed suit shortly thereafter with Microsoft Exchange Instant Messaging, later created a new platform called Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, and released Office Communications Server 2007 in October 2007. Oracle Corporation also jumped into the market with its Oracle Beehive unified collaboration software. Both IBM Lotus and Microsoft have introduced federation between their EIM systems and some of the public IM networks so that employees may use one interface to both their internal EIM system and their contacts on AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. As of 2010, leading EIM platforms include IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Jabber XCP and Cisco Unified Presence. Industry-focused EIM platforms such as Reuters Messaging and Bloomberg Messaging also provide IM abilities to financial services companies.

The adoption of IM across corporate networks outside of the control of IT organizations creates risks and liabilities for companies who do not effectively manage and support IM use. Companies implement specialized IM archiving and security products and services to mitigate these risks and provide safe, secure, productive instant messaging abilities to their employees. IM is increasingly becoming a feature of enterprise software rather than a stand-alone application.

IM products can usually be categorised into two types: Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) and Consumer Instant Messaging (CIM). Enterprise solutions use an internal IM server, however this is not always feasible, particularly for smaller businesses with limited budgets. The second option, using a CIM provides the advantage of being inexpensive to implement and has little need for investing in new hardware or server software.

For corporate use, encryption and conversation archiving are usually regarded as important features due to security concerns. There are also a bunch of open source encrypting messengers. Sometimes the use of different operating systems in organizations requires use of software that supports more than one platform. For example, many software companies use Windows in administration departments but have software developers who use Linux.

Comparison to SMS
SMS is the acronym for "short message service" and allows mobile phone users to send text messages without an Internet connection, while instant messaging provides similar services through an Internet connection. SMS was a much more dominant form of communication before smartphones became widely used globally. While SMS relied on traditional paid telephone services, instant messaging apps on mobiles were available for free or a minor data charge. In 2012 SMS volume peaked, and in 2013 chat apps surpassed SMS in global message volume.

Easier group messaging was another advantage of smartphone messaging apps and also contributed to their adoption. Before the introduction of messaging apps, smartphone users could only participate in single-person interactions via mobile voice calls or SMS. With the introduction of messaging apps, the group chat functionality allows all the members to see an entire thread of everyone's responses. Members can also respond directly to each other, rather than having to go through the member who started the group message, to relay the information.

However, SMS still remains popular in the United States because it is usually included free in monthly phone bundles. While SMS volumes in some countries like Denmark, Spain and Singapore dropped up to two-thirds from 2011 to 2013, in the United States SMS use only dropped by about one quarter.

Security and archiving
Crackers (malicious or black hat hackers) have consistently used IM networks as vectors for delivering phishing attempts, drive-by URLs, and virus-laden file attachments from 2004 to the present, with over 1100 discrete attacks listed by the IM Security Center in 2004–2007. Hackers use two methods of delivering malicious code through IM: delivery of viruses, trojan horses, or spyware within an infected file, and the use of "socially engineered" text with a web address that entices the recipient to click on a URL connecting him or her to a website that then downloads malicious code.

Viruses, computer worms, and trojans usually propagate by sending themselves rapidly through the infected user's contact list. An effective attack using a poisoned URL may reach tens of thousands of users in a short period when each user's contact list receives messages appearing to be from a trusted friend. The recipients click on the web address, and the entire cycle starts again. Infections may range from nuisance to criminal, and are becoming more sophisticated each year.

IM connections sometimes occur in plain text, making them vulnerable to eavesdropping. Also, IM client software often requires the user to expose open UDP ports to the world, raising the threat posed by potential security vulnerabilities.

In the early 2000s, a new class of IT security provider emerged to provide remedies for the risks and liabilities faced by corporations who chose to use IM for business communications. The IM security providers created new products to be installed in corporate networks for the purpose of archiving, content-scanning, and security-scanning IM traffic moving in and out of the corporation. Similar to the e-mail filtering vendors, the IM security providers focus on the risks and liabilities described above.

With rapid adoption of IM in the workplace, demand for IM security products began to grow in the mid-2000s. By 2007, the preferred platform for the purchase of security software had become the "computer appliance", according to IDC, who estimated that by 2008, 80% of network security products would be delivered via an appliance.

By 2014 however, the level of safety offered by instant messengers was still extremely poor. According to a scorecard made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, only 7 out of 39 instant messengers received a perfect score, whereas the most popular instant messengers at the time only attained a score of 2 out of 7. A number of studies have shown that IM services are quite vulnerable for providing user privacy.

Encryption
Encryption is the primary method that messaging apps use to protect user's data privacy and security. SMS messages are not encrypted, making them insecure, as the content of each SMS message is visible to mobile carriers and governments and can be intercepted by a third party. SMS messages also leak metadata, or information about the message that is not the message content itself, such as phone numbers of the sender and recipient, which can identify the people involved in the conversation. SMS messages can also be spoofed and the sender of the message can be edited to impersonate another person.

Messaging applications on the market that use end-to-end encryption include Signal, WhatsApp, Wire and iMessage. Applications that have been criticized for lacking or poor encryption methods include Telegram and Confide, as both are prone to error or not having encryption enabled by default.

Compliance risks
In addition to the malicious code threat, the use of instant messaging at work also creates a risk of non-compliance to laws and regulations governing use of electronic communications in businesses.

In the United States alone there are over 10,000 laws and regulations related to electronic messaging and records retention. The better-known of these include the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, HIPAA, and SEC 17a-3.

Clarification from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) was issued to member firms in the financial services industry in December, 2007, noting that "electronic communications", "email", and "electronic correspondence" may be used interchangeably and can include such forms of electronic messaging as instant messaging and text messaging. Changes to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, effective December 1, 2006, created a new category for electronic records which may be requested during discovery in legal proceedings.

Most nations also regulate use of electronic messaging and electronic records retention in similar fashion as the United States. The most common regulations related to IM at work involve the need to produce archived business communications to satisfy government or judicial requests under law. Many instant messaging communications fall into the category of business communications that must be archived and retrievable.

User base
As of March 2022, the most used messaging apps worldwide include: Signal with 100 million, Line with 217 million, Viber with 260 million, Telegram with 700 million, WeChat with 1.2 billion, Facebook Messenger with 1.3 billion, and WhatsApp with 2.0 billion users. There are 25 countries in the world where WhatsApp messenger is not the market leader in messaging apps, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Philippines, and China.

Messaging apps have varying levels of adoption in different countries. As of April 2022:
 * WhatsApp by Meta Platforms is the most popular messaging app in several countries in South America, Western Europe, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
 * Facebook Messenger by Meta Platforms is the most popular messaging app in North America, Northern Europe, some Central Europe countries, and Oceania.
 * Telegram is the most popular messaging app in several Eastern Europe countries, and the second preferred option after WhatsApp in several countries in Western Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Central and South America.
 * Viber by Rakuten has a strong presence in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia). It is also moderately successful in Philippines and Vietnam.
 * Line by Naver Corporation is used widely in some countries in Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Thailand).
 * Messaging apps that are predominately used in only one country include: KakaoTalk in South Korea, Zalo in Vietnam, WeChat in China, and imo in Qatar.
 * While not the dominant app for one-to-one messaging in any country, Discord is commonly used among online communities due to its ability to support chats with a large amount of members, topic-based channels, and cloud-based storage.

Terms

 * / Messaging
 * / Messaging
 * / Messaging
 * / Messaging
 * / Messaging
 * / Messaging
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Lists

 * Comparison of cross-platform instant messaging clients
 * Comparison of instant messaging protocols
 * Comparison of user features of messaging platforms

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Instant messaging


text:
Talk:Ontological warfare

For the sake of simplicity - Warfare that is Ontological in nature, is ontological warfare. 1. "Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations." Warfare, either against or using, ontology - should therefore be considered as ontological warfare. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology NOTE: I have tried to follow the talk page guidelines as best I could, but please let me know if I am committing any infractions against the etiquette. Thanks -Patrick Adams 1:47 PM PST, December 14th 2013- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.36.243 (talk) 21:53, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

It might or might not be too tangential to the article to mention that ontological warfare has been systematically used by realists against various idealist and even materialist tendencies including surrealism (which is almost without exception described in dictionaries, encyclopedias and on the web as a literary and artistic movement despite the fact that even a cursory examination of primary sources (such as Breton's Manifestoes) would show this to be utterly false). I would maintain that ontological warfare is one of the prime tools of the Pre-automatic dictatorship, though perhaps a Meta Wikipedia article would be better on this point, or the view that this is not the case can be included for NPOV. Realists and others interested in repressing automatism have made absurd claims in this regard, such as that there are no automatic texts (the ones claimed to be automatic simply being forgeries, that only temporal-lobe epileptics can easily produce automatic writing, etc.) -- Daniel C. Boyer

---

This article needs drastic trimming, or deletion. The phrase "Ontological warfare" has only eight Google hits of which:
 * Three are from Wikipedia, referring to or in this article
 * Four, inclduding one of the Wikipedia articles, report Peter Murray-Rust's comment about "semantic and ontological warfare due to competing standards" in the context of XML.
 * one is humorous, and refers indirectly to the same comment by Peter Murray-Rust
 * one other refers to information warfare

Suggestion:
 * trim extensively
 * move what's left to propaganda and information warfare.

 * disagree. there are 157 hits on google groups; 11 on web, 10 of them different from wikipedia. It is a specialized term but is becoming more common. -- Waveguy

This strikes me as an aimless rant. I read the article, and I'm no more enlightened as to what "ontological warfare" is than I was beforehand, other than the fact that I'm sure the author doesn't like it. What the heck IS it?? And what is namespace polution? I might be able to guess, but the article certainly isn't telling me. Isomorphic 08:27, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ontological warfare


text:
Version control

Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling computer files and versions of files; primarily source code text files, but generally any type of file.

Version control is a component of software configuration management.

A version control system is a software tool that automates version control. Alternatively, version control is embedded as a feature of some systems such as word processors, spreadsheets, collaborative web docs, and content management systems, e.g., Wikipedia's page history.

Version control includes viewing old versions and enables reverting a file to a previous version.

Overview
As teams develop software, it is common for multiple versions of the same software to be deployed in different sites and for the developers to work simultaneously on updates. Bugs or features of the software are often only present in certain versions (because of the fixing of some problems and the introduction of others as the program develops). Therefore, for the purposes of locating and fixing bugs, it is vitally important to be able to retrieve and run different versions of the software to determine in which version(s) the problem occurs. It may also be necessary to develop two versions of the software concurrently: for instance, where one version has bugs fixed, but no new features (branch), while the other version is where new features are worked on (trunk).

At the simplest level, developers could simply retain multiple copies of the different versions of the program, and label them appropriately. This simple approach has been used in many large software projects. While this method can work, it is inefficient as many near-identical copies of the program have to be maintained. This requires a lot of self-discipline on the part of developers and often leads to mistakes. Since the code base is the same, it also requires granting read-write-execute permission to a set of developers, and this adds the pressure of someone managing permissions so that the code base is not compromised, which adds more complexity. Consequently, systems to automate some or all of the revision control process have been developed. This ensures that the majority of management of version control steps is hidden behind the scenes.

Moreover, in software development, legal and business practice, and other environments, it has become increasingly common for a single document or snippet of code to be edited by a team, the members of which may be geographically dispersed and may pursue different and even contrary interests. Sophisticated revision control that tracks and accounts for ownership of changes to documents and code may be extremely helpful or even indispensable in such situations.

Revision control may also track changes to configuration files, such as those typically stored in  or   on Unix systems. This gives system administrators another way to easily track changes made and a way to roll back to earlier versions should the need arise.

Many version control systems identify the version of a file as a number or letter, called the version number, version, revision number, revision, or revision level. For example, the first version of a file might be version 1. When the file is changed the next version is 2. Each version is associated with a timestamp and the person making the change. Revisions can be compared, restored, and, with some types of files, merged.

History
IBM's OS/360 IEBUPDTE software update tool dates back to 1962, arguably a precursor to version control system tools. Two source management and version control packages that were heavily used by IBM 360/370 installations were The Librarian and Panvalet.

A full system designed for source code control was started in 1972, Source Code Control System for the same system (OS/360). Source Code Control System's introduction, having been published on December 4, 1975, historically implied it was the first deliberate revision control system. RCS followed just after, with its networked version Concurrent Versions System. The next generation after Concurrent Versions System was dominated by Subversion, followed by the rise of distributed revision control tools such as Git.

Structure
Revision control manages changes to a set of data over time. These changes can be structured in various ways.

Often the data is thought of as a collection of many individual items, such as files or documents, and changes to individual files are tracked. This accords with intuitions about separate files but causes problems when identity changes, such as during renaming, splitting or merging of files. Accordingly, some systems such as Git, instead consider changes to the data as a whole, which is less intuitive for simple changes but simplifies more complex changes.

When data that is under revision control is modified, after being retrieved by checking out, this is not in general immediately reflected in the revision control system (in the repository), but must instead be checked in or committed. A copy outside revision control is known as a "working copy". As a simple example, when editing a computer file, the data stored in memory by the editing program is the working copy, which is committed by saving. Concretely, one may print out a document, edit it by hand, and only later manually input the changes into a computer and save it. For source code control, the working copy is instead a copy of all files in a particular revision, generally stored locally on the developer's computer; in this case saving the file only changes the working copy, and checking into the repository is a separate step.

If multiple people are working on a single data set or document, they are implicitly creating branches of the data (in their working copies), and thus issues of merging arise, as discussed below. For simple collaborative document editing, this can be prevented by using file locking or simply avoiding working on the same document that someone else is working on.

Revision control systems are often centralized, with a single authoritative data store, the repository, and check-outs and check-ins done with reference to this central repository. Alternatively, in distributed revision control, no single repository is authoritative, and data can be checked out and checked into any repository. When checking into a different repository, this is interpreted as a merge or patch.

Graph structure
In terms of graph theory, revisions are generally thought of as a line of development (the trunk) with branches off of this, forming a directed tree, visualized as one or more parallel lines of development (the "mainlines" of the branches) branching off a trunk. In reality the structure is more complicated, forming a directed acyclic graph, but for many purposes "tree with merges" is an adequate approximation.

Revisions occur in sequence over time, and thus can be arranged in order, either by revision number or timestamp. Revisions are based on past revisions, though it is possible to largely or completely replace an earlier revision, such as "delete all existing text, insert new text". In the simplest case, with no branching or undoing, each revision is based on its immediate predecessor alone, and they form a simple line, with a single latest version, the "HEAD" revision or tip. In graph theory terms, drawing each revision as a point and each "derived revision" relationship as an arrow (conventionally pointing from older to newer, in the same direction as time), this is a linear graph. If there is branching, so multiple future revisions are based on a past revision, or undoing, so a revision can depend on a revision older than its immediate predecessor, then the resulting graph is instead a directed tree (each node can have more than one child), and has multiple tips, corresponding to the revisions without children ("latest revision on each branch"). In principle the resulting tree need not have a preferred tip ("main" latest revision) – just various different revisions – but in practice one tip is generally identified as HEAD. When a new revision is based on HEAD, it is either identified as the new HEAD, or considered a new branch. The list of revisions from the start to HEAD (in graph theory terms, the unique path in the tree, which forms a linear graph as before) is the trunk or mainline. Conversely, when a revision can be based on more than one previous revision (when a node can have more than one parent), the resulting process is called a merge, and is one of the most complex aspects of revision control. This most often occurs when changes occur in multiple branches (most often two, but more are possible), which are then merged into a single branch incorporating both changes. If these changes overlap, it may be difficult or impossible to merge, and require manual intervention or rewriting.

In the presence of merges, the resulting graph is no longer a tree, as nodes can have multiple parents, but is instead a rooted directed acyclic graph (DAG). The graph is acyclic since parents are always backwards in time, and rooted because there is an oldest version. Assuming there is a trunk, merges from branches can be considered as "external" to the tree – the changes in the branch are packaged up as a patch, which is applied to HEAD (of the trunk), creating a new revision without any explicit reference to the branch, and preserving the tree structure. Thus, while the actual relations between versions form a DAG, this can be considered a tree plus merges, and the trunk itself is a line.

In distributed revision control, in the presence of multiple repositories these may be based on a single original version (a root of the tree), but there need not be an original root - instead there can be a separate root (oldest revision) for each repository. This can happen, for example, if two people start working on a project separately. Similarly, in the presence of multiple data sets (multiple projects) that exchange data or merge, there is no single root, though for simplicity one may think of one project as primary and the other as secondary, merged into the first with or without its own revision history.

Specialized strategies
Engineering revision control developed from formalized processes based on tracking revisions of early blueprints or bluelines. This system of control implicitly allowed returning to an earlier state of the design, for cases in which an engineering dead-end was reached in the development of the design. A revision table was used to keep track of the changes made. Additionally, the modified areas of the drawing were highlighted using revision clouds.

In Business and Law
Version control is widespread in business and law. Indeed, "contract redline" and "legal blackline" are some of the earliest forms of revision control, and are still employed in business and law with varying degrees of sophistication. The most sophisticated techniques are beginning to be used for the electronic tracking of changes to CAD files (see product data management), supplanting the "manual" electronic implementation of traditional revision control.

Source-management models
Traditional revision control systems use a centralized model where all the revision control functions take place on a shared server. If two developers try to change the same file at the same time, without some method of managing access the developers may end up overwriting each other's work. Centralized revision control systems solve this problem in one of two different "source management models": file locking and version merging.

Atomic operations
An operation is atomic if the system is left in a consistent state even if the operation is interrupted. The commit operation is usually the most critical in this sense. Commits tell the revision control system to make a group of changes final, and available to all users. Not all revision control systems have atomic commits; Concurrent Versions System lacks this feature.

File locking
The simplest method of preventing "concurrent access" problems involves locking files so that only one developer at a time has write access to the central "repository" copies of those files. Once one developer "checks out" a file, others can read that file, but no one else may change that file until that developer "checks in" the updated version (or cancels the checkout).

File locking has both merits and drawbacks. It can provide some protection against difficult merge conflicts when a user is making radical changes to many sections of a large file (or group of files). If the files are left exclusively locked for too long, other developers may be tempted to bypass the revision control software and change the files locally, forcing a difficult manual merge when the other changes are finally checked in. In a large organization, files can be left "checked out" and locked and forgotten about as developers move between projects - these tools may or may not make it easy to see who has a file checked out.

Version merging
Most version control systems allow multiple developers to edit the same file at the same time. The first developer to "check in" changes to the central repository always succeeds. The system may provide facilities to merge further changes into the central repository, and preserve the changes from the first developer when other developers check in.

Merging two files can be a very delicate operation, and usually possible only if the data structure is simple, as in text files. The result of a merge of two image files might not result in an image file at all. The second developer checking in the code will need to take care with the merge, to make sure that the changes are compatible and that the merge operation does not introduce its own logic errors within the files. These problems limit the availability of automatic or semi-automatic merge operations mainly to simple text-based documents, unless a specific merge plugin is available for the file types.

The concept of a reserved edit can provide an optional means to explicitly lock a file for exclusive write access, even when a merging capability exists.

Baselines, labels and tags
Most revision control tools will use only one of these similar terms (baseline, label, tag) to refer to the action of identifying a snapshot ("label the project") or the record of the snapshot ("try it with baseline X"). Typically only one of the terms baseline, label, or tag is used in documentation or discussion; they can be considered synonyms.

In most projects, some snapshots are more significant than others, such as those used to indicate published releases, branches, or milestones.

When both the term baseline and either of label or tag are used together in the same context, label and tag usually refer to the mechanism within the tool of identifying or making the record of the snapshot, and baseline indicates the increased significance of any given label or tag.

Most formal discussion of configuration management uses the term baseline.

Distributed revision control
Distributed revision control systems (DRCS) take a peer-to-peer approach, as opposed to the client–server approach of centralized systems. Rather than a single, central repository on which clients synchronize, each peer's working copy of the codebase is a bona-fide repository. Distributed revision control conducts synchronization by exchanging patches (change-sets) from peer to peer. This results in some important differences from a centralized system: Rather, communication is only necessary when pushing or pulling changes to or from other peers.
 * No canonical, reference copy of the codebase exists by default; only working copies.
 * Common operations (such as commits, viewing history, and reverting changes) are fast, because there is no need to communicate with a central server.
 * Each working copy effectively functions as a remote backup of the codebase and of its change-history, providing inherent protection against data loss.

Best practices
Following best practices is necessary to obtain the full benefits of version control. Best practice may vary by version control tool and the field to which version control is applied. The generally accepted best practices in software development include: making incremental, small, changes; making commits which involve only one task or fix -- a corollary to this is to commit only code which works and does not knowingly break existing functionality; utilizing branching to complete functionality before release; writing clear and descriptive commit messages, make what why and how clear in either the commit description or the code; and using a consistent branching strategy. Other best software development practices such as code review and automated regression testing may assist in the following of version control best practices.

Costs and benefits
Costs and benefits will vary dependent upon the version control tool chosen and the field in which it is applied. This section speaks to the field of software development, where version control is widely applied.

Costs
In addition to the costs of licensing the version control software, using version control requires time and effort. The concepts underlying version control must be understood and the technical particulars required to operate the version control software chosen must be learned. Version control best practices must be learned and integrated into the organization's existing software development practices. Management effort may be required to maintain the discipline needed to follow best practices in order to obtain useful benefit.

Allows for reverting changes
A core benefit is the ability to keep history and revert changes, allowing the developer to easily undo changes. This gives the developer more opportunity to experiment, eliminating the fear of breaking existing code.

Branching simplifies deployment, maintenance and development
Branching assists with deployment. Branching and merging, the production, packaging, and labeling of source code patches and the easy application of patches to code bases, simplifies the maintenance and concurrent development of the multiple code bases associated with the various stages of the deployment process; development, testing, staging, production, etc.

Damage mitigation, accountability and process and design improvement
There can be damage mitigation, accountability, process and design improvement, and other benefits associated with the record keeping provided by version control, the tracking of who did what, when, why, and how.

When bugs arise, knowing what was done when helps with damage mitigation and recovery by assisting in the identification of what problems exist, how long they have existed, and determining problem scope and solutions. Previous versions can be installed and tested to verify conclusions reached by examination of code and commit messages.

Simplifies debugging
Version control can greatly simplify debugging. The application of a test case to multiple versions can quickly identify the change which introduced a bug. The developer need not be familiar with the entire code base and can focus instead on the code that introduced the problem.

Improves collaboration and communication
Version control enhances collaboration in multiple ways. Since version control can identify conflicting changes, i.e. incompatible changes made to the same lines of code, there is less need for coordination among developers.

The packaging of commits, branches, and all the associated commit messages and version labels, improves communication between developers, both in the moment and over time. Better communication, whether instant or deferred, can improve the code review process, the testing process, and other critical aspects of the software development process.

Integration
Some of the more advanced revision-control tools offer many other facilities, allowing deeper integration with other tools and software-engineering processes.

Integrated development environment
Plugins are often available for IDEs such as Oracle JDeveloper, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, Visual Studio, Delphi, NetBeans IDE, Xcode, and GNU Emacs (via vc.el). Advanced research prototypes generate appropriate commit messages.

Common terminology
Terminology can vary from system to system, but some terms in common usage include:

Baseline
An approved revision of a document or source file to which subsequent changes can be made. See baselines, labels and tags.

Blame
A search for the author and revision that last modified a particular line.

Branch
A set of files under version control may be branched or forked at a point in time so that, from that time forward, two copies of those files may develop at different speeds or in different ways independently of each other.

Change
A change (or diff, or delta) represents a specific modification to a document under version control. The granularity of the modification considered a change varies between version control systems.

Change list
On many version control systems with atomic multi-change commits, a change list (or CL), change set, update, or patch identifies the set of changes made in a single commit. This can also represent a sequential view of the source code, allowing the examination of source as of any particular changelist ID.

Checkout
To check out (or co) is to create a local working copy from the repository. A user may specify a specific revision or obtain the latest. The term 'checkout' can also be used as a noun to describe the working copy. When a file has been checked out from a shared file server, it cannot be edited by other users. Think of it like a hotel, when you check out, you no longer have access to its amenities.

Clone
Cloning means creating a repository containing the revisions from another repository. This is equivalent to pushing or pulling into an empty (newly initialized) repository. As a noun, two repositories can be said to be clones if they are kept synchronized, and contain the same revisions.

Commit (verb)
To commit (check in, ci or, more rarely, install, submit or record) is to write or merge the changes made in the working copy back to the repository. A commit contains metadata, typically the author information and a commit message that describes the change.

Commit message
A short note, written by the developer, stored with the commit, which describes the commit. Ideally, it records why the modification was made, a description of the modification's effect or purpose, and non-obvious aspects of how the change works.

Conflict
A conflict occurs when different parties make changes to the same document, and the system is unable to reconcile the changes. A user must resolve the conflict by combining the changes, or by selecting one change in favour of the other.

Delta compression
Most revision control software uses delta compression, which retains only the differences between successive versions of files. This allows for more efficient storage of many different versions of files.

Dynamic stream
A stream in which some or all file versions are mirrors of the parent stream's versions.

Export
Exporting is the act of obtaining the files from the repository. It is similar to checking out except that it creates a clean directory tree without the version-control metadata used in a working copy. This is often used prior to publishing the contents, for example.

Fetch
See pull.

Forward integration
The process of merging changes made in the main trunk into a development (feature or team) branch.

Head
Also sometimes called tip, this refers to the most recent commit, either to the trunk or to a branch. The trunk and each branch have their own head, though HEAD is sometimes loosely used to refer to the trunk.

Import
Importing is the act of copying a local directory tree (that is not currently a working copy) into the repository for the first time.

Initialize
To create a new, empty repository.

Interleaved deltas
Some revision control software uses Interleaved deltas, a method that allows storing the history of text based files in a more efficient way than by using Delta compression.

Label
See tag.

Locking
When a developer locks a file, no one else can update that file until it is unlocked. Locking can be supported by the version control system, or via informal communications between developers (aka social locking).

Mainline
Similar to trunk, but there can be a mainline for each branch.

Merge
A merge or integration is an operation in which two sets of changes are applied to a file or set of files. Some sample scenarios are as follows:
 * A user, working on a set of files, updates or syncs their working copy with changes made, and checked into the repository, by other users.
 * A user tries to check in files that have been updated by others since the files were checked out, and the revision control software automatically merges the files (typically, after prompting the user if it should proceed with the automatic merge, and in some cases only doing so if the merge can be clearly and reasonably resolved).
 * A branch is created, the code in the files is independently edited, and the updated branch is later incorporated into a single, unified trunk.
 * A set of files is branched, a problem that existed before the branching is fixed in one branch, and the fix is then merged into the other branch. (This type of selective merge is sometimes known as a cherry pick to distinguish it from the complete merge in the previous case.)

Promote
The act of copying file content from a less controlled location into a more controlled location. For example, from a user's workspace into a repository, or from a stream to its parent.

Pull, push
Copy revisions from one repository into another. Pull is initiated by the receiving repository, while push is initiated by the source. Fetch is sometimes used as a synonym for pull, or to mean a pull followed by an update.

Resolve
The act of user intervention to address a conflict between different changes to the same document.

Reverse integration
The process of merging different team branches into the main trunk of the versioning system.

Revision and version
A version is any change in form. In SVK, a Revision is the state at a point in time of the entire tree in the repository.

Share
The act of making one file or folder available in multiple branches at the same time. When a shared file is changed in one branch, it is changed in other branches.

Stream
A container for branched files that has a known relationship to other such containers. Streams form a hierarchy; each stream can inherit various properties (like versions, namespace, workflow rules, subscribers, etc.) from its parent stream.

Tag
A tag or label refers to an important snapshot in time, consistent across many files. These files at that point may all be tagged with a user-friendly, meaningful name or revision number. See baselines, labels and tags.

Trunk
The trunk is the unique line of development that is not a branch (sometimes also called Baseline, Mainline or Master )

Update
An update (or sync, but sync can also mean a combined push and pull) merges changes made in the repository (by other people, for example) into the local working copy. Update is also the term used by some CM tools (CM+, PLS, SMS) for the change package concept (see changelist). Synonymous with checkout in revision control systems that require each repository to have exactly one working copy (common in distributed systems)

Unlocking
Releasing a lock.

Working copy
The working copy is the local copy of files from a repository, at a specific time or revision. All work done to the files in a repository is initially done on a working copy, hence the name. Conceptually, it is a sandbox.

title: Version control


text:
User:Ptolmis~enwiki

( ptolmis )|

title: User:Ptolmis~enwiki


text:
Politician

A politician is a person who has political power in the government of a state, a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government.

Identity
Politicians are people who are politically active, especially in party politics. Political positions range from local governments to state governments to federal governments to international governments. All government leaders are considered politicians.

Media and rhetoric
Politicians are known for their rhetoric, as in speeches or campaign advertisements. They are especially known for using common themes that allow them to develop their political positions in terms familiar to the voters. Politicians of necessity become expert users of the media. Politicians in the 19th century made heavy use of newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, as well as posters. In the 20th century, they branched into radio and television, making television commercials the single most expensive part of an election campaign. In the 21st century, they have become increasingly involved with the social media based on the Internet and smartphones.

Rumor has always played a major role in politics, with negative rumors about an opponent typically more effective than positive rumors about one's own side.

Government job and spoils
Once elected, the politician has to deal with government officers and government employees working for them. Historically, there has been a subtle conflict between the long-term goals of each side. In patronage-based systems, such as the United States in the 19th century, winning politicians replace the government officers and government employees not protected under the government services rules with their supporters. It was the "spoils system". Government job reform was initiated to eliminate the corruption of government jobs. However, in many less developed countries, the spoils system remained in full-scale operation as of 1982.

Careers and biographies
Mattozzi and Merlo argue that two main career paths are typically followed by politicians in modern democracies. First, is career politicians. They are politicians who rule the government sector until retirement. Second, are the "political careerists". These are politicians who gain a reputation for expertise in ruling certain levels of government such as International Governments, Federal Governments, State Governments and Local Governments, then leave politics and start a new business venture making use of their political contacts.

The personal histories of politicians have been frequently studied, as it is presumed that their experiences and characteristics shape their beliefs and behaviors. There are four pathways by which a politician's biography could influence their leadership style and abilities. The first is that biography may influence one's core beliefs, which are used to shape a worldview. The second is that politicians' skills and competence are influenced by personal experience. The areas of skill and competence can define where they devote resources and attention as a leader. The third pathway is that biographical attributes may define and shape political incentives. A leader's previous profession, for example, could be viewed as of higher importance, causing a disproportionate investment of leadership resources to ensure the growth and health of that profession, including former colleagues. Other examples besides profession include the politician's innate characteristics, such as race or gender. The fourth pathway is how a politician's biography affects their public perception, which can, in turn, affect their leadership style. Female politicians, for example, may use different strategies to attract the same level of respect given to male politicians.

Characteristics
Numerous scholars have studied the characteristics of politicians, comparing those at the local and national levels, and comparing the more liberal or the more conservative ones, and comparing the more successful and less successful in terms of elections. In recent years, special attention has focused on the distinctive career path of women politicians. For example, there are studies of the "Supermadre" model in Latin American politics.

Many politicians have the knack to remember thousands of names and faces. United States Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were renowned for their memories.

Criticism
Many critics attack politicians for being out of touch with the public. Areas of friction include how politicians speak, which has been described as being overly formal and filled with many euphemistic and metaphorical expressions and commonly perceived as an attempt to "obscure, mislead, and confuse".

In the popular image, politicians are thought of as clueless, selfish, manipulative, dishonest, incompetent and corrupt, taking money in exchange for goods or services, rather than working for the general public good. Politicians in many countries are regarded as the "most hated professionals".

title: Politician