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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Vocabulary matter: Component vs Element vs Item
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 22:42:30 -0500
Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation
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Date: 2013-07-26T22:42:30-05:00
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Le Fri, 26 Jul 2013 20:42:21 +0200, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
<yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> a écrit:

> Would be nice if there were some explanation somewhere, about how the RM 
> choose to assign their signification to Item and Element. Whether the 
> thing is named from the point of view of whom send or whom receive the 
> thing, is probably important too. You hardly follow a convention if you 
> don't understand it :-D

"component" has a formal definition in Ada (3.2(2)); as do "subcomponent" 
and (unfortunately) "part".

OTOH, "element" and "item" are just used in one of the predefined packages, 
which is a much more informal usage. You can find this out by looking in the 
index of the LRM; terms that have definitions are indexed to those 
definitions.

While "component" is indexed to 3.2(2), "element" is just indexed to the 
containers and to storage pools (not a general term), and "item" doesn't 
appear at all. (It is only used in it's English sense.)

Summary: You can try too hard to make sense of a pattern when there isn't 
any. :-)

                                                      Randy.