On Wednesday 25 April 2007 09:49 Clayton wrote:
Sleepless night ;) tought about it again and I'm now convinced we should go for one of those:
(software) catalog (software) channel (software) directory
or something similar. Avoiding "source" would be a plus because this term is too closely coupled with "source code" and open software user are probably not ready to understand the differences easily.
I've bumped into some difficulty with the term repository when I say it to unsuspecting new users... the word has little meaning to them.
I agree.
Software catalog or something similar is much more descriptive.
In the past, I also made the experience that you have to explain to many users what a "software catalog" is, unfortuantely this is also no self-explanatory term
How about this:
(software) library
It (in my mind anyway) describes exactly what it is... a software library or a collection of software that end-users can browse and select applications from.
well, for me at least, the term "library" might also be confused with "program libraries" - so similar problem as the possible confusion between "installation sources" and "source code" some people mentioned here before... it seems to be impossible to find a highly self-explanatory term which appeals to all users (unexperienced newbies, geeks, developers... to name only a few "categories") and which doesn't have all sorts of connotations... for me, the most important thing therefore is to be consistent in terminology - whatever the actual term may be. I think readers may get used to many terms as long as you use them consistently (throughout the software strings, documentation, translation etc.). Especially for unexperienced users it is extremely difficult to figure out what a certain topic or term is all about if it is not used consistently - not to mention the exponential growth of terms and confusion you may get when a text which contains various terms for the same thing is being translated. in many environments and sorts of texts, variation is a good thing (literature, journalistic texts etc.) - but in tech writing, consistency is a very important feature Tanja --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-doc+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-doc+help@opensuse.org