Re: Fw: [Nautilus-list] Proposed string changes to the Nautilus UI

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Wed, 2002-04-03 at 14:20, Alex Larsson wrote:
> 
> The problem I see here is that in normal conversation/usage you very 
> seldom use the term for describing "GNOME as a whole", in fact describing 
> it to my mother is hard, whereas using the term "the desktop" refering to 
> the  place where you store your files and stuff (like on the mac) is 
> really common.

More importantly, in normal conversation/usage you'll much more
often have to distinguish between "the place where you store your
files and stuff" and "the picture behind all your files and stuff"
than between either of those and "the collection of applications
and whatnot that provides your user experience". The latter will
hardly be mentioned at all -- it's just part of the... er...
background. :)

That said, we could change "desktop background", meaning the
picture, to "wallpaper", but I'd still argue against using "desktop
background" to mean anything *other* than "wallpaper", which is
what I'll bet you 95% of users are going to think it means.

The "desktop" in "GNOME Desktop" is an extension of the use of 
"desktop" as "the place where you store your files and stuff";
the latter isn't a reduction of the former. We maybe should come up
with a new name for "GNOME Desktop" if we have to, but let's not
allow it to screw up the original (in a UI context) meaning of
"desktop".