GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 496945
Plugins should probably be called Extensions
Last modified: 2008-08-20 14:51:33 UTC
In an effort to get GNOME applications that support Plugins, Extensions, Addins, etc., to have a consistent name, I propose using the name "Extensions" [1]. From comment #18 on my blog post about the subject [1], I conclude: a) There seems to be complete agreement that Add-ins, Add-ons, or anything that could be hyphenized is out of the question. Looks funny too. b) That pretty much leaves us with “Extensions” and “Plugins.” c) “Extensions” seems to be best suited for internationalization, and you can’t really mess it up (I’d love to see someone spell it Exten-sions). “Plugins” degrades across cultural boundaries [2]. That said, I don’t think getting into a deep analysis of the vague differences between Extensions and Plugins is necessary. For all intents and purposes, they convey the same thing. [1] http://abock.org/2007/11/14/plugins-addins-extensions-oh-my/ [2] The fact that "Plugins" is very hard to translate was brought up by a number of people. "Extensions" apparently does not have this problem (comment #8): "I vote for Extensions. In Italian you can’t really translate plugin, thus one has got to let it untraslated. Every time I use the word “plugin” I have to spend 5 min explaining it. So, besides being very culturally insensitive, it’s time consuming as well."
http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdp-style-guide/stable/gnome-glossary-generic-terms.html.en The currently recommended terminology in Gnome is "plugin". If the community feels strongly that "extension" is a better word, then we can change the Style Guide. But please, let's not have individual applications making this change without a change to the Style Guide.
(In reply to comment #1) > (...) >But please, let's not have individual applications making this change > without a change to the Style Guide. > Closing as INVALID due to recommendation from Style Guide.
Uh.. you closed this because the style guide currently says 'plugin' and not 'extension'?
(In reply to comment #3) > Uh.. you closed this because the style guide currently says 'plugin' and not > 'extension'? bug 496932 comment 2 explains why it should be closed for now. I think we should be closing this now, and reopening when the recommended word to use is extensions.