Are events raised, triggered, or fired?

Question

In a German programming forum we currently have a discussion about events and what you (grammatically) do with them.

The MSDN talks about "Event Raising" and "to raise an event". Thus, this seems to be one possibility.

Are there any other synonyms? What about "to trigger an event" and "to fire an event"?

A Google search will bring results for all of the three possibilities. This, however, does not mean that they are correct, too, of course. Are they?

Are there any stylistic or other differences, or are they used in different contexts?

Answer 1

These are all acceptable. Microsoft standardized on "raising" an event because it sounds less provocative.

Eric Lippert mentions the rationale on his blog: "the usage committee people felt that between "raising" and "firing", they'd pick the less bellicose-sounding one..."

This is also mentioned in the framework guidelines: "Do use the raise terminology for events rather than fire or trigger."