"Folder" or "Directory"?

[Craig Drummond]

> I dispute that no decision has ever been made, because a firm decision was
> indeed reached on kde-i18n by many of the people concerned including the 
> English docs and proofreading team, several years ago, after a long 
> discussion covering virtually the same ground that's been regurgitated
> here lately.

OK - I should've searched the archives before posting, didn't think it'd be
such a big issue. Anyway, I can't find any "firm decision" on kde-i18n. On
kde-doc-english I found statements such as:

Thomas Diehl 2001-09-11 :

    I guess this means the big unification effort (directory -> folder etc.)
 will have to wait until after KDE 3.0?

Thomas again 2002-05-08 : 

    Consistency helps the community quite a lot. It is what KDE mostly is
about. So the only question was which of the 2 terms to chose. "Directory" is
the Unix/Linux term and just "feels" better to many Unix/Linux people (myself
included). "Folder" is the term that's used in most graphic user enviroments
(therefore most of ours users will know and expect it), and it fits better to
our icons. Therefore by far the most people voted for "folder" and wanted to
keep "directory" only when there's a clear reference to the system/command
line."


...both seem to indicate a user preference for folder. But nothing changed.
And the second also backs up my point about creating a "New Directory", and
using a pic of a "folder".

> 
> As a policy, it has also been rather consistently applied.  A quick look 
> through the translation templates shows 1830+ occurernces of 'directory' 
> almost invariably referring to directories on disk, and 820+ occurrences
> of
> folder, with most of those occurring in kmail, knode, and their associated

But is this due to kde being written mainly by coders? Who probably use the
command line a lot? As stated in the comments above, users prefer "folder".

> Even better, raise it at an appropriate time, in an appropriate place,
> along with carefully hand checked patches that won't break anything - said

That'd be a big patch if there are 1830+ strings...

> We've gone a dozen or so releases already with this scheme, and 3.2 is not
> the last release KDE will ever make, so for me this just has to fall into
the 
> 'it's really not very urgent, if you care so much, be prepared to do the 
> work' category.

As I said in the original mail, I am prepared to make the changes (although
obviously not for other languages) myself. But as I don't consider myself
"senior" enough in KDE to make such a decsion, I asked on kde-usability, and
here.

> 
> Regards,
> -- 
> Lauri Watts

Thanks.


Craig.

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