Re: [HIG] conforming to the GDP word list

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 08Oct2001 04:55AM (-0500), Gregory Joseph Merchan wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 01:27:17AM -0700, Seth Nickell wrote:
> > We need to make sure that our vocabulary is primarily being drawn from
> > the GDP word list (at least wherever it makes sense to overlap). I've
> > gone through and changed every sensible instance of "program" to
> > "application" as a first pass, but we really should perform a careful
> > audit of our word choices as they will likely affect application
> > developers to some extent.
> 
> How many times do I have to restate this? Consider your audience!
> 
> The audience of a style guide is not the end-users of the system.
> The audience of a style guide is the developers of the system.
> 
> This is evident even in the GDP word list which defines "application"
> (a type of program) and uses "program" in almost every instance.
> 
> The audience of the HCI guidelines is the programmers; therefore and for
> example even though "access key" is a better description than "mnemonic"
> for the underlined letter in a widget label and even though calling that
> a mnemonic is wholesale abuse of the language, that is what I'm going to
> call it in the glossary and that is to what every synonym for that will 
> point.
> 

I think when practical we should use the appropriate end-user-friendly
terms so that app developers start to think of them as the standard
terminology. 

For "application" vs. "program" this is not so important, but I think
we're better off using "access key" than "mnemonic".

 - Maciej