Drupal Ace's Annoyance Gallery
Annoyances? In Drupal? Yep, we've got a few!
These will likely be short notes, so rather than individual posts, I'll maintain a single ongoing list.
The Annoyance List
Excess terminology
Have you noticed that what's alternately called "teaser" and "excerpt" is also called "trimmed post" in admin/content/node-settings? That's three words for one thing.
Confusing terminology
I do wish that there weren't node types called "page" and "story", as those are generic words needed for generic purposes as well. It's almost impossible to discuss pages in Drupal without using the word "page", which may be a page listing everything and anything except the nodes known as "page".
It'd be good for Drupal to avoid naming functional terms with generic words needed elsewhere. (And by "term" I mean "word", not the tags officially known as "terms". See what I mean?)
Re: Drupal Ace's Annoyance Gallery
>Excess terminology
Agreed. Except that I don't think Excerpt is terminology used by Drupal core. BTW the term "trimmed post" was probably added because newbies complained they didn't know what a teaser was.
>Confusing terminology
Have you got any better suggestions for "page", "story", "term" ...
(If so then post them to the issues queue http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal)
Re: Drupal Ace's Annoyance Gallery
Ah, the old "So, you got a better solution?" question. Always the right question to ask!
Well, it's a tough one here. We could replace "story", for example, with "article", but that's just replacing one generic word with another – nothing solved.
Neither of those is as much a problem as "page", though – that word gets heavy use in both the generic sense of any page displayed by the website, and the Drupal sense of a specific content type. It can confuse.
It's clear that a page (node type) is not synonymous with page (generic sense), as a page (generic sense) can be composed of multiple pages (node type). Or a page (generic sense) can be composed of multiple stories (node type) or multiple blog entries (node type) or multiple polls (node type), etc.
I'm going to mull better naming possibilities. But if no good new names come up, I hold fast to the idea that simple capitalization would be a big step forward: a page is any page; a Page is a specific node type. A story is a narrative that could be placed into any node type; a Story is a node type that could hold any type of text (narrative or otherwise). And so on, as outlined here: Clearer Terminology through Capitalization
Now, as for "term", that's another matter: a simple capitalization to Term would be fine, but it's easy to find a better name all around: "tag", a word that fits perfectly and whose meaning is instantly clear to web users everywhere. I've written this up in some detail, and invite any kindly interested parties to read the post: Why not call it "tagging"?
Anyway, you are correct that these things should be submitted properly to the Issues for Drupal list, where they can be discussed, acted upon, and/or just laughed at, as appropriate. Will do!... though, aye yi yi, I see it's going to be a long search through the existing issues list to make sure these topics aren't already covered.
(By the way, I see among the issues list that the objection to multiple names for teasers has already been made: http://drupal.org/node/193680 So I'll not bother entering that one.)
Thanks for the comment!
Terminology
Good point you have, well explained and makes lots of sense.
You should bring it up at drupal.org.
I just wonder why it bothers you to be laughed at (if it wud ever happen), some do and others take it seriously that's how we're made. Go ahead and give your great input while only counting those that understand your point.
I like your site and contribution.
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