[Kde-pim] jargon is bad! :)

[Dr. Robert Marmorstein]

I think the idea that jargon is bad doesn't take into account the modern 
approach to information lookup.  I may not know what Akonadi is at first 
glance, but it is a LOT easier to Google for Akonadi than for something more 
generic like "e-mail storage proxy".  It may be jargon, but it actually makes 
error messages EASIER to parse, not harder.  I think, at least for error 
messages, it's more important to be technically accurate than to make the user 
interface seem polished.  

In the long run, if we are successful in promoting Kontact, terms like Akonadi 
will cease to be jargon and will become accepted parts of the vocabulary (like 
Kleenex).  

My two cents,

Robert

On Sunday 21 March 2010 1:57:40 pm Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Tuesday 16 March 2010, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > hi ...
> > 
> > first: apologies for the cross posting. at least you can see that it
> > isn't - just- your projects that suffer from the issue below, though
> > ;)
> > 
> > ok, so the point of this email is to note the obvious: displaying
> > jargon to the user is bad. the average computer user does not know
> > what "compositing", "akonadi" or "nepomuk" are. they do understand
> > what "desktop effects"[1], "personal information service"[2] or
> > "search service" is.
> 
> Akonadi is worse than "personal information service", but the latter
> still is part of a domain specific language most users won't understand.
> 
> In my experience nobody knows what "personal information" is supposed to
> be. Quite frankly, if I wouldn't know what "personal information" (in
> the context of PIM) means I'd read it as "information about my person".
> Maybe that's a language barrier thing.
> 
> (FWIW, Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for "personal information" which
> IMHO is a good indicator for a term that is not a widely known.)
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't know a better term. :-(
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Ingo
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