Christian, I assume you meant this to go to the list... On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 02:37:00PM +0200, Christian Rose wrote: > On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, colin z robertson wrote: > > A few questions of terminology... > > > > Which is preferred (and why) out of: > > - Settings/Options/Preferences > > As MikeGTN already mentioned, Darin (of Nautilus fame) explained that > "Preferences" are the ways that the user wants the application to behave, > while "Settings" is more low-level options of the program. > > So while this would depend on the type of settings the program has, it > would seem that using "Preferences" is better suited if you want to make > the application more user-oriented (the user has a "preference" and > might know what he/she prefers, but might not know or should not need to > know the program's settings to make it work that way). Ok, I can see that the user has preferences and the app has settings, but if we were to call the configuration dialog that we present to the user "Preferences" then we would be implying that the dialog presented options in terms of the user's preferences, when actually 99.9% of such dialogs present it in terms of the app's settings. To take the example that Darin Adler used of a browser's max number of connections, the user's preference is for "optimal bandwidth usage" or perhaps simply "speed". Unfortunately, until we get web browsers with AI capabilities (and I'm not holding my breath), we're not going to be able to automatically determine the optimal settings and we're going to have to present users with those technical questions. While we're doing that is it still a good thing to label them "Preferences"? > > - Directory/Folder > > Both of Evolution and Nautilus use "folder". This is also what the Windows > and MacOS environments use, so it seems that "folder" is preferred to > make the terminology more consistent. Point taken, but let me make the counter-argument. Most old Unix programs still use "directory", and it will be some time (if ever) before users stop having to interact with those. For the sake of consistency with the rest of Unix we should be using "directory". Speaking personally, I'm a "directory" person myself, and I recently noticed another reason to like the term: The usual abbreviation for "directory" is "dir", which is very appropriate if you pronounce it as "dire". colin _____________________________ ____ rtnl http://rational.cjb.net c z robertson ndirect co uk icq 13294163
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