Re: TOAST versus toast

> On 3/17/25 00:24, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Note the lack of any upper case. Shortly later we reverse-engineered
> > an acronym for it [2], with the winner being Tom Lockhart's
> >
> > The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique

I (very easily) found a reference to the GSM tool:
https://linux.die.net/man/1/toast

At the bottom, you're directed to write to Jutta at UT Berlin in case of
bugs. Searching for that you'll eventually arrive at
http://quut.com/berlin/toast.html
which points out that this is Jutta Degener, currently of Sunnyvale, CA:
https://quut.com/credits.p3

On 2025-Mar-17, Jan Wieck wrote:

> Which made it into an acronym. Acronyms are typically capitalized to
> distinguish them from ordinary words.

However, we do stop capitalizing acronyms once they get in common
enough. The example of LASER (originall acronym for "light
amplification by stimulated emission of radiation") was already
mentioned, but there's also RADAR ("radio detection and ranging"), which
is particularly useful in this discussion because its wikipedia page
says

The term radar has since entered English and other languages as
an anacronym, a common noun, losing all capitalization.

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Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
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