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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Inconsistent use of case in acronyms
From:       Vedran =?utf-8?q?Ljubovi=C4=87?= <vedran-liste () smartnet ! ba>
Date:       2004-08-29 17:50:54
Message-ID: 200408291950.54979.vedran-liste () smartnet ! ba
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On Sunday 29 August 2004 12:29, Chusslove Illich wrote:
> In Serbian, one can write acronym without all upper cases if it can be
> *pronounced as a word*, i.e. not spelled out. Frequently we write "Unesko"
> instead of "UNESCO", "Nato" instead of "NATO", etc. I don't know what are
> the English spelling rules on this matter, but it seems it frequently goes
> along same lines, especially with back-formed acronyms (backronyms):
> "Gnu", "Gimp", "Gnome", etc. 

Well www.gnu.org, www.gnome.org and www.gimp.org use all caps.

> Or take "radar", nobody writes it as 
> "RADAR" (Radio Detection and Ranging) any longer.

That's different - "radar" became a word - it was "accepted" as local 
linguists would say (don't know how English linguistics call this).

> As for MIME, I suspect that it actually is pronounced like "mime" instead
> of being spelled out. Since it is frequently changing spelling, something
> could be prescribed in this case as a measure of style consistency; but I
> don't think there should be a general rule, as it might confuse people in
> other cases (like with backronyms). I agree that "MIME" is a better
> alternative as it is more conservative, though I find that real meaning of
> "mime" is not so far from that of "MIME type" -- a quick gimmick to pass
> some important info :)

Interesting observation ;) but surely you understand I mentioned MIME just as 
an example.

> I do not think that shell commands should not be mentioned in a GUI,
> especially because there may be other commands as well (like IRC, TeX,
> etc.) On the other hand, I do think that it would be nice if developers
> would refer to commands only when they really have to, and use proper
> names of programs/packages with normal casing otherwise. It would be very
> convenient for Serbian translators, as we might both transliterate (in
> case of Cyrillic script) and add case ending to a proper name, but not to
> a command. However, having in mind the liberal interchange of these in
> world of Unix, it will be a cold day in hell before developers start
> adhering closely to such a distinction.

Yes but KDE has style guides for a whole lot of less important (IMO) things, 
so if an official doc would say "don't mention console commands in a GUI 
unless forced to with a gun" then I'd say we at least tried :)

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