Can someone from the core team share insight on th...

# compose

[Sam]

Can someone from the core team share insight on the reason for the name change? Coming from SwiftUI, Stack is quite familiar nomenclature!

[Bsn Net]

Yes stack is good name

[matvei]

There is a bunch of reasons for that change.

• There's no good proper name for the concept of layout that stacks children in Z axis. It's called FrameLayout in android, ZStack in swiftui etc. We received some feedback that people expect Stack to be vertical, or even horizontal. People have different backgrounds and different expectation from that name. Overall we've decided that being 100% semantically correct is not worth it, and just having simple name for a simple concept will work just fine, hence Box .
• We wanted to reduce number of APIs for general layouts. People used Box as a modifier wrapper or even as a leaf node with just modifiers on it. Sometimes they used Box to wrap many children as well. Name Box can be both (layouts that overlays children AND thing that you apply modifiers), allowing us to reduce complexity be reducing amount of API for people to learn. Stack wasn't striking us as smth that would read nicely without children.
• We can concentrate on one thing performance wise and tune it nicely as we expect Box to be used quite regularly.
• it's shorter to type (2 chars saved! 😛 )

[Archie]

Just an opinion: Box doesn't really feel like it states its purpose. I understand that it Stack may mean VerticalStack (Column) and/or HorizontalStack (Row) but Box seems even more confusing. I feel like naming it ZStack like in SwiftUI makes the purpose much more clear compared to naming it Box.

[gildor]

doesn’t really feel like it states its purpose

but there are different purposes for it

[sindrenm]

typealias Stack = Box