[Ubuntu-l10n-eng] Gaim/Pidgin's buddy

[Dan Bishop]

On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 15:35 +0100, Nigel Titley wrote:
> Matthew Smith wrote:
> >
> > It *is* a colloquialism for friend, but it has different shades of
> > meaning; I would say "alright, mate" and americans would say "hey,
> > buddy" as a greeting to an acquaintance or a stranger - but i wouldn't
> > call them "friend". the terms are synonyms, but they have different
> > connotations. The less colloquial 'friend' carries more weight. It's
> > why AIM, and in turn Pidgin, selected 'buddy' in the first place. It
> > gives the app a friendly feel, without being too definite about the
> > relationship you have with your buddies - that's what we should be
> > trying to capture, although as we can't have 'mate', I guess 'friend'
> >   
> "pal" used to be a much closer synonym for "buddy" but has fallen out of 
> use these days. The problem is, as Matt says, that there is no real 
> equivalent for "buddy" in modern day English. It can be used to cover 
> the whole range from close friend through to someone you bump into in 
> the street. I think the best we are going to come up with is "friend". I 
> noticed to my horror recently that BT has started to refer to the person 
> who organises a meeting and takes the minutes as the meeting's buddy....
> 
> Nigel
> 
> 
I think contact is the best option, I don't really think it is important
to add a "friendly feel" to it. I also think that differentiating
between a contact and a "meta-contact" (i.e. when one person has
numerous accounts and you tell gaim/kopete/any other IM client that all
those accounts are actually the same person, or where you add
addresss/other details to them) is a bad idea. It adds confusion where
there needn't be any. A "meta-contact" is still just a contact, you've
just added more information about them than a regular contact.

Dan
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-l10n-eng/attachments/20070601/5cc15555/attachment.pgp