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Bug 241909 - Contact/addressbook naming convention
Contact/addressbook naming convention
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Contacts
2.6.x (obsolete)
Other other
: Normal minor
: Future
Assigned To: evolution-addressbook-maintainers
Evolution QA team
Depends on:
Blocks: 327508 327510
 
 
Reported: 2003-04-25 12:57 UTC by Ismael Olea
Modified: 2008-07-10 15:38 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Ismael Olea 2003-04-25 12:57:34 UTC
The naming convention for Contact/Addressbook is not homogenic in the UI
messages neither user docs.

Thinking in usability terms, I think it should be better to choose one of
them, IMHO.
Comment 1 Ismael Olea 2003-10-08 21:37:46 UTC
Seems this is still happening. Is there any HIG convention about this?
Comment 2 Anna Marie Dirks 2003-10-09 18:06:35 UTC
No, there is not. 

We will be fixing this in the 2.0 release. 
Comment 3 André Klapper 2005-01-31 12:10:57 UTC
anna/tigert, any updates on this?
Comment 4 André Klapper 2005-03-08 14:47:31 UTC
because of anna's last comment i'll target this to 2.3.
Comment 5 André Klapper 2005-03-09 16:37:54 UTC
same as "rules" and "filters", see bug 251100.
Comment 6 Calum Benson 2005-07-28 10:41:28 UTC
Apologies for any spam... cc'ing usability-maint on all Evolution usability
bugs. Filter on EVO-USABILITY-SPAM to ignore.
Comment 7 Srinivasa Ragavan 2005-08-23 06:48:38 UTC
Im not sure, how we should take it. Contacts is the module name. and every entry
is termed as contact/contact list. Address book is the collection of contacts
under a specific backend.

I dont think its fare to rename Address Book as Contacts. It would really
confuse a lot. I would love to leave it as it is and close as wont fix. But
definitely i want your opinion on it.
Comment 8 Calum Benson 2005-12-01 01:37:06 UTC
FWIW, while I agree that 'address book' is certainly a nice real world metaphor, some possible reasons 
to use 'Contacts' instead might be:

- It's quite possible that I'm not actually storing any 'address' information for some  of my contacts-- 
maybe just a name, phone number and/or IM or VoIP username, for example.  So the metaphor starts 
to fall down a bit when transferred to the desktop.  (Admittedly, you might use a real address book that 
way too, though.)

- Consistency of terminology; the plural of 'contact' is obviously 'contacts', not 'address book' :)  This 
sort of simple, consistent use of language can help people who are using the desktop in their non-
native tongue, and often helps with localisation too (although I'm no expert there).

- If, in future, you ever need an 'Address Book' menu anywhere, you're going to fall foul of the HIG-- 
menu titles are only allowed to be one word.

No strong feelings either way though, really, provided whatever term(s) you choose for contacts and the 
object that contains them are used consistently everywhere.
Comment 9 Sushma Rai 2005-12-01 07:45:00 UTC
Somethings which might be confusing to the users who have been using 
Evolution for long.. are:

1.
"New Adress Book" -> "New Contacrts"  
[New->Contact and New->Contact List are also present]

2. 
In "Mail preferences -> Automatic Contacts" ->
"Automatically create the entries in Contacts when responding to mail"

3.
"Address book Properties" -> "Contacts Properties"

4.
"Add to Address Book" -> "Add to Contacts"

We might have to reframe some labels if we want to go replace address book with
contacts.
Comment 10 André Klapper 2005-12-01 09:11:48 UTC
well, couldn't we just say that all contacts in the contacts are contacts, but
that i can have several addressbooks (left pane) in my contacts? ;-)
Comment 11 André Klapper 2005-12-01 09:18:45 UTC
anyway, retargetting and reopening; adding string keyword
Comment 12 André Klapper 2006-02-26 15:15:59 UTC
to my understanding, the component "contacts" consists of at least one "address book" (left pane) which each contain contacts.
Comment 13 André Klapper 2006-06-18 12:23:52 UTC
removing old target milestone.

sush: those strings are all correct to me, see my comment #10.
when i start a new evolution instrallation, i have one address book named system. i can add several address books. the contacts in those address books are contacts, and all contacts are contacts (TM).
Comment 14 Matthew Barnes 2008-03-11 00:27:31 UTC
Bumping version to a stable release.
Comment 15 Milan Crha 2008-07-10 15:38:00 UTC
Heh, nice bug, closing it, I also think it's fine as it is.