OrganoPleno wrote:JulianMoney-Kyrle wrote:Not like set, then, which is irregular?
As you please. Usage for Computer Terminology can differ from the standard language. Specifically, by avoiding the irregularities. So a feature could well be "Sunsetted", just as the plural of a Computer Mouse is always "Mouses".
I have only ever heard them referred to as mice, but I was educated and have always lived in the UK. For that matter, "sunsetted" surely isn't techical jargon, which is there to allow clarity and precision in communication, but sounds more like managementspeak, which seems to exist to provide a ready-made vocabulary and script for those who have nothing worthwhile to say.
In my experience, new words (or usages) dreamt up by computer users are not generally informed by any knowledge of the history of the English language. In medicine (my field) and biology, when you encounter an unfamiliar word a little awareness of Latin and Greek roots (not much is needed) makes it straightforward to guess the meaning and also how to spell it. Indeed, there was a time when scientists took the trouble to ensure that any words they coined were apt and would be universally understood.
When Michael Faraday found himself faced with the task of naming the points where a current flowing in an electrolyte arose from and went to, he consulted the classicist William Whewell, telling him that he imagined the current flowing from East to West, like the sun. He had considered terms such as eastode and westode, oriode and occidode, eisode and exode... Whewell suggested anode and cathode, referencing the Greek words for the way the sun rose and set. Faraday liked the idea and used them in his paper on electrolysis. Now that seems to me both etymologically sound and a way of helping to visualise the flow of electrical current; a proper use of sunset.
(Faraday knew nothing of electrons or other subatomic particles, and we still follow his convention in describing electric current as flowing from positive to negative, despite electrons in a circuit travelling the other way. Though in electrolytes and also semiconductors the charge carriers flow in both directions, of course...)