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List:       mifos-functional
Subject:    Re: [Mifos-functional] Look-up option terminology
From:       "Van Mittal-Henkle" <vanmh1 () comcast ! net>
Date:       2007-06-22 17:47:14
Message-ID: 002001c7b4f5$5ec95af0$2201a8c0 () sunrise
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There are two levels to think about here:

1) the terminology presented to an end user (and used in the FS)
2) the terminology used in the code to implement the feature

The more closely these two levels match (exactly if possible), the better it
is for allowing functional discussions to translate transparently into a
developer's understanding of the code.

I believe that the current mismatch between the functional usage of "Lookup
Options" versus the implementation which makes use of "Lookup Entities",
"Lookup Labels", "Lookup Values" and "Lookup Value Locales" is creating
confusion here.

> But even currently, I don't think that is true.  The weekday example
> comes to mind, although I think Van is right that there is no reason
> for this to be implemented via look-up options.  Another example is
> activities ("Can create multiple Loan accounts" and so on).  There
> are others, some of which will presumably remain even if we move some
> (like weekdays) to properties files.     

It seems to me that the weekday and activity usage of the internal "Lookup
Entities/Values/Value Locales" classes is something slightly different from
the concept of "look-up options" as it relates to functionality exposed in the
UI. In the former case we are dealing with fixed lists of values while in the
latter we have editable lists of values.  The thing is that the same
underlying implementation is being used for both so from the code perspective
it is harder to think of the two cases separately.
 
>> Customizable selection options
>> User definable selection lists
>> Customizable selection lists
> 
> I don't understand what the word "list" is supposed to convey. 
> "Option" is still pretty vague, but seems a bit better than "value". 
> At least for me, "selection" doesn't convey anything which isn't
> covered by "option".   

In the UI "Look-up Options" seems to refer to lists of
editable/customizable/user definable (pick your favorite term)
values/options/items (pick your favorite term) from which a value/option/item
can be selected when creating some Mifos object.

> I think the word "message" or "label" probably belongs here
> somewhere.  Those (especially message) are words for chunks of text
> which get displayed to a user.  For example, in
> ConfigurationPersistence there's a comment:   
> 
>  * I think this one maybe should be called LabelPersistence or some
> such 
>  * following the lead of LabelConfigurationTestSuite.

"message" and "label" both make sense to me in terms of the implementation,
but I don't know if the end user would think of something like a list of
salutations (Mr., Ms. Etc) as a list of messages or labels.  

--Van




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