bikeshedding terminology

[nothingmuch]

After several months of familiarizing myself with the codebase, I'm still having trouble remembering some of the names for various methods and what they refer to.

For example, in Receiver, I still don't know why extract_req uses extract as its verb, I forget which request that method pertains to (it's the HTTP GET request for polling the subdirectory), it uses the (non pub) method fallback_req_body which also isn't sticking for me.

Some method names are kind of obvious when familiar with the spec, e.g. process_res for Receiver could only mean one thing, the sender's proposal, but calling it res is also a bit confusing to me. Another example that comes to mind is {en,de}crypt_message_{a,b}. My immediate thought is that these would be a bit clearer as {en,de}crypt_{proposal,response}_payload, but note how response is already overloaded to refer to the sender's proposal in process res!

There are also terms in the BIP 77 spec that I believe are a bit unintuitive, e.g. subdirectory instead of mailbox. I've spoken to @DanGould about some of these things in the past, but haven't yet systematically written down my points of confusion or things I find hard to remember. Anyway I'm starting this thread to do that and hoping others would chime in, if it's just me being an airhead that's probably insufficient motivation to bikeshed terminology, especially in the spec, but if I'm not alone then maybe it's worth revisiting some of this.

[DanGould]

We've got an opportunity to make deliberate choices wrt api names before 1.0. Not so keen on running through the list right now since we've got prerequisite tasks on our plate, other than changing subdirectory to mailbox. Happy to include / add a terminology audit as an issue in the 1.0 milestone.