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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: wording
From:       Henrique Pinto <stampede () lagoaminas ! com ! br>
Date:       2003-08-18 22:15:50
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On Monday 18 August 2003 07:20, David Hugh-Jones wrote:
> A big issue in the recently published usability report was wording. For
> example, users were confused because some apps used "directory" and some
> used "folder".

But, in KDE, "directory" and "folder" are two distinct concepts...

> What could we do about this? Could we draw up a list of concepts, with
> the "KDE standard" terminology to use for each of them?

This is indeed a good idea.

As Tim Jansen pointed in another message, two things need to be done.
For the standard terminology, we may, at a first moment, set up a wiki based 
interface where people would colaborate on the elaboration of the document. 
After it is "stabilized" (i. e., we would have already agreed on many of the 
basic issues), it would be moved to developer.kde.org, as a separate document 
("KDE Naming Guidelines") or as part of the style guide. Unfortunately, I 
don't have how to set up this wiki system. Could anyone do this?

We should also contact the documentation team, as this issue is highly 
related.

For Tim's second point, the main issue is that it could overload the 
translators. In order to try to avoid this, we should contact the 
internalization team and schedule with them the most appropriate time for the 
modifications. It should also be noted that that would be an incredible 
amount of work. Even though standarizing strings is a relatively easy task, 
there are lots and lots of strings in KDE's codebase. And the documentation 
team may also have to "standarize" the already written documents...

> Could we leverage the i18n() function here, to translate "from English
> to English", i.e. so that all strings get translated into KDE standard
> terminology?

Not a good idea. I would lead to confusion and also it would be a potential 
source for bugs in strings, since this "automatic translation" might change 
the meaning of the sentence. It would also not help in the case of 
"directory" and "folder", since they're distinct, but may be used 
incorrectly.

> Dave
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> kde-usability mailing list
> kde-usability@mail.kde.org
> http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability

-- 
	Henrique Pinto
	stampede@coltec.ufmg.br

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