Data retention reminder on live CD

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 12:22:58PM +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> I think the closer the warning appears to the potential dataloss, both
> in time and space, the more effective it will be. So a note at the
> beginning of startup wouldn't be as effective as a notification bubble
> at the end of startup. A notification bubble at the end of startup
> wouldn't be as effective as a watermark on the background image (because
> the latter would be more persistent). And a watermark on the background
> image, while helpful, wouldn't be as effective as something that happens
> right when you're about to save stuff in a non-persistent place.
> 
> So in addition to a watermark (which I guess would need to show tiled
> text in multiple languages), I suggest a warning message (with a
> mini-exclamation icon) appear embedded into the Save dialog whenever the
> current folder is a non-persistent one. As soon as you switch to a
> persistent folder, the message should disappear.

I am interested to hear from GTK, Qt, etc. developers whether this is
feasible. It would need to be done at least in GtkFileChooser and the Qt
equivalent. I am conscious, though, that many applications do not use
common dialogs and instead implement their own. I do agree that this
would be the most effective hint, if feasible.

Can we do watermarks without having to prepare and maintain a whole new
set of desktop wallpaper images just for the live CD?

> I also think consistently using the the phrase "test drive", instead of
> the jargon "live CD", would help more people understand what they're
> doing when they use Ubuntu this way.

We use "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer" on the CD boot
menu; with the awareness that this won't in practice be translated into
every possible language, I think it's best to keep language simple, and
I feel that the simple "try" is better than the colloquial "test drive".
I suspect a number of translators would render "test drive" as "try"
anyway. :-)

Of course, that isn't to say that "test drive" wouldn't work in a
desktop notification or watermark; it could work OK there, given that
users will have been prepared by the more explicit language on the CD
boot menu.

There are still a few places to hunt and destroy "live CD" jargon in
Ubiquity, and I agree that we should avoid it elsewhere.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]