From Gliftic V5 to Gliftex V6 - what's in a name?

Gliftic is a program which creates images almost from nothing. When I was searching for a name for it I imagined combining hieroglyphs, the symbols used in ancient Egypt. But I could not call it hieroglyph there would be too much competition in the search engine for that term.

So, what about glyph on its own? A glyph, in printing, is a character, or a punctuation mark, or a symbol. But glyph also had too much competition in the search engines.

So I came up with Glyphtic. When I searched all those years ago there were no search engine results for "Glyphtic", so that seemed like a good name. (There are now by the way).

I thought some more - Glyphtic was easy to say but probably hard to spell, so I settled on Gliftic.

So, from Gliftic Version 1 to Gliftic Version 5 I had a unique name, easy to find on the Web. Then I made a stupid mistake: I let the domain expire, and (£*#$&!@ me!), someone bought it! www.gliftic.com is now an unknown search engine site:

Well, that will teach me. After all that trouble to come up with a decent name and get it found by the search engines I had to change the name.

So, Gliftic V5 is followed by Gliftex V6. Why "tex"? Textiles, textures, or rhymes with sex? I don't know, but it is short and easily remembered.

Owen F Ransen, September 2006

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