Unity Terminology

[Phil Bull]

Hi Jeremy,

On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 02:02 -0400, Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> The terminology for the new Ubuntu Unity interface is confusing, even
> more so with the design changing over the months and the developers
> not having providing much user documentation yet. So that we're not
> tripping over each other with different ideas of what to call things,
> I think we should try to decide what are the best names for stuff and
> discuss changes as they inevitably will come up.
[...]

There are some GNOME terminology guidelines here:

https://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Planning/Terminology

They're not completely relevant to Unity, but adopting as many of those
terms as possible will help to minimise confusion between Unity and
Shell.

My take on terminology guidelines for documentation is that "being
correct" (calling things by the technical names the
programmers/designers invent for them) isn't important; it's better to
choose a term that makes sense to users. For example, the GNOME
terminology recommendation for the User Menu is "The application name in
the top bar". It's wordy, but at least users know what to look for.

Thanks,

Phil

(P.S. Great work on the docs!)