Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

[Icehouse] Re: ZPIPs: An unofficial survey

  • FromDavid Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateThu, 15 Mar 2007 06:50:48 -0700
> Let's say that some hypothetical company was interested
> in making some ZPIPs for sale, based on the earlier
> discussed model of converting TreeHouse sets.  Let's also
> assume that said company was capable of effectively
> negating shipping costs from LLabs or a distributor.

If you also presume said company will set up a jig on a band saw and use
a table sander, then I think our past calculations show that one could
pay $40 an hour in labor and still sell a complete set of 55 ZPIPs for
around $35 plus shipping. That seems fair to me. Much over $40 for
55--i.e. more than the price of four Treehouse sets--and I'd make them
myself (I don't earn $40 an hour at my full time job).

> (if it's going to be a word, we no longer need to
> capitalize it)

Well, technically speaking, ZPIPs is an initialism, as it doesn't make a
pronounceable word.
However, if it is hyphenated as Z-PIPs (which, I believe, it should be:
"zero-point" is a compound adjective), it does make an acronym (i.e.
it's pronounceable).

But either way, acronyms and initialisms remain capitalized until they
become very, very common. Like, radar and scuba common. Z-PIPs will
probably not gain more common usage than, say, HTML or WYSIWYG or any
other very common acronyms/initialisms that are still all-caps.

Just 2¢ from a technical editor;
David


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