Re: String review

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 20:49 +0200, Christian Persch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> For quite some time, the general inconsistency of strings in the various
> GNOME modules has irritated me. For example, let's just look at some
> strings in GNOME:

[snip]

> You'll notice:
> - the varying messagestyle: "[do] it?", "Would you like to...?", "Are
> you sure you want to...?", "Do you want to...?". Is the file X, is it
> 'called' X, or 'named' X?
> - the varying presentation of the message, i.e. how the variable data
> (%s) is embedded in it: no quotes, single quotes, double quotes, pango
> markup.
> 
> To fix this, I think we need:
> - a String Guidelines addendum to the HIG. The HIG already tells us what
> capitalisation to use in which circumstances; we need a complete style
> guide;

The Gnome Documentation Style Guide already contains sections with
recommended terminology, which the HIG defers to.  But programmers
often don't read the GDSG, because they're not writing documentation.
I proposed a while ago to split the recommended terminology sections
of the GDSG into a separate document, which the HIG and the GDSG
would then reference prominently.

Creating a Gnome terminology guide would allow us to expand on the
strings it recommends, including stuff like what you've mentioned,
without completely bloating another document.

--
Shaun