Rename bounding_box to cell_vectors consistently

[mfherbst]

Renamed occurrences of cell_vectors to bounding_box for consistency.

[cortner]

I disagree with this change. cell_vectors is more typical than bounding_box and in fact I would remove bounding_box in favour of cell_vectors.

[mfherbst]

Fine with me as long as it's consistent in the code base.

@jgreener64 @rkurchin others thoughts ?

[rkurchin]

It seems that the core point here is that we should be consistent about what we call this thing, which I definitely agree with. I personally do not have strong feelings about which particular name we go with.

[jgreener64]

No opinions beyond consistency.

[cortner]

not sure what to say here, I stand by what I said. google "bounding box" and "cell vectors" and see what you get. Bounding box is a concept from image processing, while cell vectors immediately brings up links to Wikipedia Unit Cell.

If you all disagree with me and decide you prefer to stick with the existing terminology, then not much I can do.

If you want to consider changing the terminology, then the natural thing to do would be to deprecate the bounding_box function for the next minor version.

[tjjarvinen]

I would prefer cell_vectors also. It is a much better name, as it does not need explanations. (plus what Christoph mentioned about googling)

[jgreener64]

To clarify I am fine with that change as long as the same term is used throughout the codebase.

[mfherbst]

Same here. If no one expresses clear preference in the other direction, I'd suggest we change everything to cell_vectors.

[mfherbst]

Ok, this will now completely remove bounding_box in favour of cell_vectors.

How do we feel about the plural form here. I used it because of our previous discussion. But now I note that cell_vectors is potentially inconsistent with our other functions and keyword arguments, which are all singular.

I'm not too sure about this. Singular is a bit strange here, too.

What are your opinions ?

[rashidrafeek]

I think the plural form cell_vectors is fine as it is a common terminology.

Also just pointing out that this is technically breaking as bounding_box was not removed from the interface in the v0.4 update and is still mentioned as part of the interface. It doesn't affect me personally, as I have not yet shifted to 0.4, so no issues if we decide to remove it. Would it be better to just deprecate bounding_box and remove it in 0.5?

[cortner]

Technically we can use cell_vector(sys, :) but I agree this is strange in this context.

Using the plural is not inconsistent because cell_vectors is a system property and not a particle property.

I strongly support plural.

(and yes to the last post - this is breaking and will have a deprecation cycle.)

[rkurchin]

I'm good with this being merged once the docs issue is fixed. I would suggest we add a minor version bump here too though so we can start having the deprecation warnings etc.

[mfherbst]

Sure, I agree. Should get to it later today.