John Levon wrote:
On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 01:12:22PM +0200, Helge Hafting wrote:
But still - they do understand that this letter to mom have this name,
that report have that name, and so on. This is what you need to use
"save".
No, Helge, naming a document is entirely different to what File->Save
presents. Naming a document is useful and reasonably understandable.
Somehow tying this to a directory entry on a file system and introducing
the notion of "saving" isn't.
I disagree. Giving a document a "filename" is useful when
the filesystem is your persistant storage and main archival
system. That's how current computers are set up.
Perhaps "store" is a better word than "save", but I can't
see how you can claim that the operation itself isn't useful.
How else would you want to preserve a document for the future?
Call it by a better name if you like - the operation itself seems vital.
(And if you think most users understand file systems, you should hear
people refer to the disk storage as the "memory"...)
They are correct in this. Disk storage is a kind of (magnetic) memory.
Computer experts tend to think of RAM when they hear "memory",
but it is far from the only kind. It doesn't matter much if users
don't understand about RAM. They need to know that what's
on the screen right now will be lost unless it is "saved/stored" in
some way. And these days, a named file is where it usually goes.
Or in some cases, a relational database.
I have met plenty of people who
believe the desktop cabinet is called "the hard disk". They are
wrong about such details, but still seem to cope well with
a set of named files they use in everyday work.
Dumbing down for the dummies sure isn't the way to go,
This has nothing to do with dummies.
Good. You're making it harder by not explaining what
you want instead of "save". I'll read the book,
not only because of this, I assume it has much more
to offer than a replacement for "save".
Helge Hafting
