On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 11:22,
<steve-ayatana@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's a bit hard to know what you intend by "That's why we want to move the desktop to human language" as this is the only message I've received on the thread (having just subscribed), however, having seen how the new version of Ubuntu (10.10) has increased the number of words in dialog boxes, e.g. the file copy/overwrite files, presumably to make things simpler and friendlier, personally I find that it has had the reverse effect and obscured the intended meaning.
yeah.. every consistency aware interface must speak one or more languages, since it will otherwise never achieve actually serving the user.
The more human(e) this language is, the more humans will find it easy to connect with the command interface.
I think Ubuntu doesn't understand English yet, but certain formal instructions which resemble human language are understood, e.g. by the Command Line Interface ~$
Ubuntu also can't speak or write English yet, at least not creatively.
What we call "dialogs" are in fact pre-written conversations. The user barely gets the chance to say anything really.
Instead, these pseudo conversations impose geeky language upon the "ordinary user", which rids them even more of purpose.
An entity can only "understand" a message, if it is able to associate its content with experience.
If i don't know the difference between "suspend" and "hibernate" for example, the only way to find out what happens is to try out the respective control.
Understanding an interface makes using it correctly a walk in the park, that's why we all want to see the desktop move more into that direction.