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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: Too technical terms in PO's
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () planescape ! com>
Date:       2001-12-04 21:34:36
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On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 11:16:36PM +0200, Claudiu Costin wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 December 2001 22:40, Rob Kaper wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 06:33:20PM +0200, Claudiu Costin wrote:
> > >   There are many places where such strings occur. E.g.
> > > "KBlabla::init()  died in foobar!". There exist KDebug
> > > to report errors, especially fatal ones. I think a number
> > > should be assigned. E.g.
> > >    "KSuperApp Error code: 12345"
> > >    "Please report it to author!"
> >
> > That's helpful how? It doesn't provide more accurate information for the
> > author (after all, I supposed the author knows the meaning of current
> > messages) and it certainly won't make things less cryptic for users.
> >
> > I remember getting a lot of error 12345's with RealPlayer. When I went to
> > the site for more info, it listed it as "Unknown error". At least I
> > could've searched Google for cryptic messages.
>   If numbers are so hated, how can you explain for average user difference
> between image & pixmap. How about things more complicated. Joe user 
> send this number to author if it feel to be cooperative. But Joe will not
> bother to send long long error message happned in KSuperApp::mangabanga()
> virtual method... :)
> >
> > Some phrases might need to be changed for users (especially the what's this
> > ones, I guess), but error numbers are horrible and should be avoided at all
> > costs. (imho)

Agreed; a text on screen is there for the user, not the developer.
The principle is simple; the user does not have to know much to be able
to use a computer as long as all the knowledge needed for using this is 
'in the world' (in contrairy to 'in the head')  Which basically boils down to
the fact that texts have to be understood without referring to documentation.

In both cases this fails; both text are basically wrong and should be fixed.

>From kcmbackground.pot:
> "Checking this box lets KDE to use shared memory for image to pixmap
> conversions."

People don't care about the technical talk; just state what it is that actually
affects the user when changing the setting..
Never mind that the english is broken to begin with ;)

Someone know why it is 'nice' to use shared mem for this? Is it faster? Does it 
mean the memory load is less? What?

-- 
Thomas Zander                                            zander@earthling.net
The only thing worse than failure is the fear of trying something new

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