Re: Meaning(s) of "Desktop" (Was Re: [gnome-cy] Accelerators, HTML)

[Dafydd Harries <daf parnassus ath cx>]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 03:01:56PM +0000, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 09:42:40AM +0000 or thereabouts, Dafydd Harries wrote:
> > I've been sort-of keeping notes on phrases I've been uncertain about,
> > which I'll include now since you might want to discuss them in the
> > meeting tonight.
> 
> This is a brilliant list. I am going to take some of these to
> the gnome-i18n list and see whether they are meeting the same
> ones and the principles they use when they decide. 

I've got lots more :).

> > "Desktop". Currently, "bwrdd gwaith" is getting used. Literally, that's
> > something like "work table". It doesn't help that "desktop" is used to
> > mean more than one thing: what you can see on the screen, the whole
> > Gnome environment, and what'r underneath all your windows. At any rate,
> > I don't really like "bwrdd gwaith".
> 
> I don't disagree that this probably happens. But It shouldn't be 
> meaning all these things in Gnome. 
> 
> http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/gnome-glossary-desktop.html
> is a very large page, but it does include all the terminology and how
> documenters and app authors should be using them. You can ignore things
> like "usage" and "tags" in the explanations: that's for how they are
> marked up in DocBook. 
> 
> desktop
> 
>     Definition:
> 
>     A windows-based environment for users. The desktop is the sum of 
>     all the parts of your working environment. The desktop includes all 
>     of your panels and windows, the desktop background, and all of your 
>     workspaces and viewports. In a GNOME session, you only have one 
>     desktop.
> 
> [snip]
> 
>     Example:
> 
>     To add a workspace to the desktop, use the Root menu.
> 
> For "the background", you'd want desktop background ("the part of 
> the desktop where there are no interface graphical items, such as 
> panels and windows"). 
> 
> That is of course how it _should_ be used. If you find it used
> in another context in Gnome, please file a bug and cite that
> page :) 

Yes, reading this email made me think back to where I had got this
impression, and remembered this: gnome-panel, string 83:

	Button to hide application windows and show the desktop

Which if I understand things correctly, should say "desktop
background". A bug has been filed
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108677) with (assuming I
haven't messed something up) a patch that fixes it. (This is my first
patch submission ever - quite exciting!) We should watch out for things
that need similar treatment.

> Anyway, that definition might help with finding the right word
> for it?

Yes, this looks very helpful. Certainly, I feel clearer about desktop.
It seems it's user in three ways:

1) "desktop":
	The workspaces, panels, windows, and desktop background and
	anything else the user deals with.

2) "desktop background":
	The bit underneath the windows and panels.

3) "The GNOME Desktop"
	Just about the same as meaning 1.

If we're using "bwrdd gwaith" for "desktop", these translate into

1) "bwrdd gwaith"
2) "cefndir y bwrdd gwaith"
3) "Y Bwrdd Gwaith GNOME"

These sound clumsy to me, and the last sounds wrong too. I think perhaps
we should use "Amgylchedd" ("Environment") for the last one, and I'd
prefer something shorter like "gweithle" for the others:

1) "gweithle"
2) "cefndir y gweithle"
3) "Yr Amgylchedd GNOME"

I like "gweithle" because it's short, and because it's descriptive,
since it means "work place" and the desktop is where you do your work
(in the most general sense of "work").

-- 
Dafydd

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