[indiana-discuss] [desktop-discuss] 2008.11 UI Spec

[Calum Benson]

On 21 Aug 2008, at 07:59, Jedy Wang wrote:

> Hi Calum,
>
> Why we want to change "GIMP Image Editor" to "Image Editor" when we
> change "Move Player" to "Totem Movie Player" with an internal patch.

It's a very good question :)

FWIW, the reason we change "Movie Player" -> "Totem Movie Player" is  
that, at one time, we had three media players on the JDS menus: Totem,  
Java Media Player and Real Player.  So the Totem change was just to  
help users tell them apart.

Of course, that doesn't apply to OpenSolaris, and in Nevada, it's less  
of a problem now that JMP is gone from the menus.  But Songbird seems  
to be very popular now, and we may even install it by default at some  
point.  So the Totem patch is probably still useful.

For GIMP, I suggested the change just because we have no other image  
editors on the menus for users to be confused with.  When that's the  
case, we prefer to show only the functional name on the menus.  (I'm  
not even sure if there are any other 'image editors' for Solaris that  
users might want to install themselves, that would need to be  
distinguished from GIMP.)

(FWIW, "gimp" is also an American slang word for a handicapped person,  
so it's potentially a slightly offensive term to some people.  But  
given how popular the GIMP project has become without any major  
complaints about the name, that's only a very small concern... and  
anyone who runs the application will immediately be shown a "GIMP"  
splash screen anyway.)

So anyway, that's the reason :)  I agree this is a low priority  
change.  If there are more important things you need to be doing to  
get the UI spec implemented, or if you think we're already generating  
too many trivial patches for menu changes, I'd be happy enough not to  
make this change for GIMP.


> I also do not think "Play movies and music" is better than "Play  
> movies
> and songs".


It's certainly not worth changing, if that would be the only change we  
were making to that desktop file.

I suggested it only because the GNOME docs team tends to prefer the  
term "Music" to "Songs"-- not all music files are songs.  (Nor are all  
audio files "music", of course, but there isn't really any good  
generic, non-technical term for "audio files", or we'd use that  
instead.)

Of course, we now also have a "Music" folder in GNOME by default,  
which reinforces the use of that term.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson at sun.com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems