[indiana-discuss] [advocacy-discuss]

[Calum Benson]

On Fri, 2007-09-28 at 18:05 -0500, Shawn Walker wrote:

> The big thing that many GNU/Linux distributions lack today is a
> feeling of consistency. Too many of them go to one extreme or the
> other and end up with a mess. That's one of the reasons I think
> Windows and OS X are so successful. The names of software that come
> with the system indicate their purpose and make their usage almost
> obvious.

A lot of them don't, necessarily, they've just come into common usage.
Who would guess 'Outlook' was a mail client, or 'Excel' a spreadsheet?
(Apple aren't immune either, with 'Quicktime', 'Logic' and similar.)

FWIW, the GNOME HIG states that all GNOME apps should appear with a
functional name rather than a pet project name on the Launch menu,
except where the project name is needed to distinguish multiple apps
with the same function.  Originally the usability team wanted to extend
this into the applications themselves (for the core GNOME apps only),
but the developers revolted.  Hence, we have a "Text Editor" on the
menu, but "gedit" on the title bar, in the docs, and as the binary name.
Ho hum.

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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