[Kde-pim] jargon is bad! :)

[Sven Burmeister]

Am Dienstag, 16. März 2010 09:06:22 schrieb Thomas McGuire:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tuesday 16 March 2010 02:40:03 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > 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.
> > 
> > in my testing of KDE 4 here with real, actual non-technical KDE users (so
> > not people who use MS Windows or Mac usually and are randomly subjected
> > to KDE for a testing session ;), something that keeps coming up is the
> > jargon that gets "leaked" out into the UI.
> > 
> > this is not a small issue. it's the difference between "this is
> > difficult, hard and sucks" and "i like this". seriously, even in failure
> > people respond better when the messages they get are understandable and
> > human. few things freak people out more than not understanding something
> > they just read when it is something they feel they probably need to
> > (like an error message).
> > 
> > i've fixed up nepomuk once or twice (but jargon continues to leak as new
> > strings are added!), i've just looked through kwin's messages and fixed
> > them up (after testing the results on a user here) and akonadi hasn't
> > been touched yet (and is full of visible jargon).
> > 
> > please spend the few minutes necessary to improve this. it is really,
> > really important. and please help prevent new strings with jargon from
> > creeping in.
> 
> I absolutely agree. In KDEPIM, we have to be careful about this. For
> example, we should use the term "Folder" instead of "Collection" and
> "Mail", "Contact" etc instead of "Item".
> 
> Sometimes, using the term "Akonadi" can not entirely be avoided, and I'm
> unsure what to do about it. For example, when KMail can not work because
> Akonadi is not running, we have to tell the user in some way, like "The
> Akonadi PIM framework is not running, bla bla.".

I would not avoid using the term akonadi, since it is kind of a trademark to 
promote. But one should use it as such, i.e. add it to the non-jargon 
expression like: your email will be imported into the central kde data storage 
(akonadi)...

Sven
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