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Not enough naming consistency in Linux UI

openusability.blogspot.com

1 points by bitbandit · 3 comments

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Glyptodon

Perhaps a deeper issue is that the "Name" of a program in human terms is very unlikely to ever match a name that you'd use on the command line unless it's only one word long.

  • wmf

    This is a bug in Unix culture and an example of spray-on usability. It's perfectly legal to have a file named "Software Manager" and it's not even harder to type if your shell has case-insensitive completion. Yet the situation persists where the "human-readable name" is different from the "internal name". (Not that people generally launch GUI apps from the command line anyway.)

    • bitbanditOP

      Calling an executable "Software Manager" is legal, but it's also inconsistent with other executables.

      In this case the executable is "mintinstall" and it could have been called software-manager or softwaremanager.

      You are right, the human readable name is generally different from the internal name, but the internal name should be invisible to a GUI user.

      Here the problem is that the name of the executable has made its way to the GUI.

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