[RsR] function naming for "robust ..."

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Matias" == Matias Salibian-Barrera <matias using stat.ubc.ca>
>>>>>     on Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:07:55 -0800 writes:

	  .........

    Matias> A few days ago I uploaded the package "roblm" to CRAN.
    Matias>  ........

    Matias> Note that the name of the package (and the
    Matias> corresponding class) is "roblm", but this does not
    Matias> mean that I necessarily prefer this name over
    Matias> others. I've been working on this for some time now,
    Matias> and for the reasons that I mentioned in Treviso
    Matias> ("rlm" and "lmRob" are already taken) I settled for
    Matias> roblm.

yes. In Treviso, we had talked about trying to go for "rlm" and
I had offered to try to resolve the name clash with MASS::rlm().
I now think that this may not be a good idea:  rlm()
in MASS is really relatively prominent in the MASS book with
years of tradition, and usage in many places.  Also its default
method is "M", not "MM" { for a good reason: back compatibility
with older versions of rlm()}.
Hence our new  (robust|rob|rf|r)lm(Rob) function would never be
'call-compatible' to MASS::rlm() and for that reason I think we
should strive for a different naming scheme.

Andreas Ruckstuhl had raised the point already at Treviso, and
on this list (Dec 7, "Re: [RsR] OGK covariance estimator") where
he'd proposed
     r*   [as 'rlm' in MASS]
     rob* [as 'roblm' above]
     rf*  ["[R]obust [F]itting of ..", used in Andreas' package]

The last one may be a bit more logical than all the others,
since in one sense there's just one linear model with different
fitting methodologies, since in fact,
the error distribution hasn't been part of the
model specification __for most statistical software__

OTOH, "rob" is easy to pronounce/spell
[OTOH, there's all the people called 'Rob' ...]

As you can guess, from Andreas' list, I'd either take
'rob*' or 'rf*' and don't have strong preference.  
Other opinions?

Martin