Re: Confusion of Applet and Capplet :)

[Glynn Foster <glynn foster sun com>]

Christian Rose wrote:
> 
> There are plenty of other reasons why terminology should be picked so
> that it translates easily. Invented nonsense words like "Gizmo",
> "Yokeys", "Thingameybobs", "Whizlets" and "Evilets" are particulary bad
> examples. The reason is that they simply are nonsense words that give no
> information about what they are in themselves. They are thus hard to
> understand as terminology even by English users, and the situation just
> gets worse when exporting the terminology to another language.

Of course you are right in saying this...I thought there could be some
term that could be used to describe these apps - and yes, most/all of
the above are not particularly untuitive for what they provide...

There is also another problem. Some of the current applets are quite
small...which means that if you don't do Add to Panel->Applet and 
instead goto the main menu with Program->Applet then there could
be some confusion....Perhaps removing the Applet entry in the main
menu is the solution to this problem - 

	Applets->Utility->Screenshooter

nothing happens...where the fuck is it?...Perhaps the addition of the 
word 'Panel' in front of 'Applet' solves it...although I still think it
is quite unintuitive.I think I'd prefer to see addition of applets to
the panel through the 'Add to panel' menus....[wherever they might be].

> You simply can't translate nonsense to another language (what is the
> correct translation?), and replacing it with a "native" nonsense word is
> out of the question - people will have a really hard time trying to
> realize that native nonsense word A and nonsense word Z in English are
> related at all, and that they are really the same thing. Especially as
> documentation usually is non-existant.
> 
> Importing "as it is" is usually broken. The words use English spelling
> and break other languages' spelling and pronounciation rules. Also, some
> languages use concatenation of the word and other endings in the
> definite form, in plural form, and lots of other grammatical forms. It
> will often be *really* weird trying to use the word and apply the
> language's grammar.
> 
> Trying to translate the spelling is often also hard. Most of the words
> above would simply not be recognizable if I tried to transliterate them
> into Swedish, as an example. Then you're back to the previous problem -
> not recognizable.

I completly understand the problem with translation...and in some ways,
creating new words isn't the right solution either... :(

> And this is the problem. There often *is no* proper documentation, and
> when you look at translated documentation, it's usually even worse.
> There is none. Should there be some, then it's always outdated. Of
> course this is sad, but I think it's safe to say that it won't change
> any time soon. So relying on documentation, especially translated
> documentation, is really bad.

Don't say that...we want to set a precidence with 2.0 documentation wise..
Set a standard for documentation to be reached :) 

> > I'm still getting used to the idea of Panel Gizmos ;)
> 
> Believe me, many others will have even bigger problems to get used to
> it, or even understand it...

Heh.


			See ya,
				Glynn ;)