Codename: NGEDIT
Well, yesterday I finally managed to release ViEmu 1.4.3. Together with it, I announced the new ViEmu support forums over at the main web site. I had wanted to set up a forum area for some time, and Gavin Bowman’s tip on PunBB was the tipping point. Pretty painless to set up. After learning so much about mail spam and blog comment spam, I guess I gonna learn about forum spam now.
Apart from a support area, it will also be a place to request comments from customers on design issues for forthcoming versions, etc. As well, I like to give detailed explanations to customers on technical details, reasons for shortcomings, etc… I will feel better doing it now that it will benefit more customers.
The title of this post is because I’ve almost made up my mind about the new name for the editor. There are some checks I still want to do, but I’m mostly done. I wanted to use this space for a small call for help. It turns out the name I’m thinking about has a certain ‘Japanese’ sound to it (although it doesn’t come from Japanese). I would like to check with someone knowledgeable whether it means anything in Japanese, and whether it has some negative connotation. A few Japanese people already registered ViEmu, and several websites talk about the product (not that I know what they’re saying), and I wanted to take this point into account for NGEDIT. I’ve tried checking Japanese dicitionaries myself, but frankly, I don’t feel confident at all. I don’t even know what I’m looking at when I find the results. If you think you can help, please drop me a line.
The name also means something in Latvian, with a safe meaning, and it actually comes from Esperanto. Y’know, the international language. I studied Esperanto for one or two years. That was many, many years ago – it was a lot of fun. But anyway, the main point is the sound of it (not that many people would understand a word in Esperanto).
Apart from that, ViEmu sales keep climbing steadily. Sales during the second half of January didn’t keep up with the outstanding first week, but they were fine nonetheless. January was a new record (we’re not talking large figures here, but it’s fine). I was looking forward to February to tell whether this was a ‘trend’ or just a ‘spike’. I’d already heard that January is usually the best month for sales of development tools. Well, so far it seems February is keeping up with January and even a bit better. So I’m happy on that front. A vi emulator probably can’t become a really big business, but the income stream is nice, and it gives me good confidence on the outlook for NGEDIT.
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:17 pm
[…] As I mentioned recently, NGEDIT will not be the name of the final product. I already have the candidate for the name, and there’s only one thing pending before it becomes official: I need to check it with a Japanese person. I haven’t been very successful through asking here on the blog, or through asking the Japanese customers of ViEmu. Understandably, I haven’t insisted too much on my Japanese customers – they are customers after all! […]