Re: [Tails-project] #8948: Reconsider the terminology around…

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: Public mailing list about the Tails project
Subject: Re: [Tails-project] #8948: Reconsider the terminology around "persistence"
segfault:
> sajolida:
>> [...]
>> - When working with Simply Secure in August 2018, they had no problem
>> calling it "Persistence" and told me that it's a common practice to
>> use capitalized words, even neologisms, to refer to major features.
>>
>> In this email, I'm proposing to follow this recommendation and to use
>> Persistence, a single work with a capital P. See examples below.
>
> I'm in favor of calling the feature "Persistence". The only potential
> problem I see with that is translating it. When it's the name of the
> feature and capitalized, I feel like it shouldn't be translated. But
> that could make it harder for non-english speakers to understand the
> feature.


Right. I'd be interested in hearing the translators' opinion on that.

In Spanish, I would write "la Persistencia", translated and with a
capital P. But I wonder whether it would be more problematic in German
for example, which uses capital letters for all common nouns.

>> [...]
>> Usage
>> =====
>>
>> I went through our website and custom software to check how using
>> "Persistence" would work in practice. I've also used it myself for some
>> time in my emails and in Redmine.
>>
>> Below are some examples of usage taken from existing strings.
>>
>> I'll use these practical examples to finish discussing this with you and
>> especially with Cody. I will then use them to finally write new entries
>> about Persistence in our writing style guide.
>>
>> the Persistence / your Persistence
>> ----------------------------------
>>
>> To refer to the encrypted partition (when there is one
>>
>> For example:
>>
>> - Enter your passphrase to unlock the Persistence.
>
> I don't like that. It doesn't sound right to refer to a partition/volume
> with the abstract term "Persistence".
>
> I would prefer "Persistence volume".


Hmm... That's precisely the kind of simplification that I want to make
here :) It's also by far the most common category of examples that I
found in our interfaces and doc. We've been back and forth between
"volume" and "storage" several times in the past, none of them were
really great and my proposal is to drop them both. I feel like my
proposal becomes moot if we continue using "Persistence volume" in such
lines.

With "Enter your passphrase to unlock the Persistence", we're creating a
neologism and making "Persistence" a common noun. It seemed quite
natural to people from Simply Secure. So I want to wait for Cody's
opinion and to see how it does when testing my proposal in actual
content with people while working on #9814 (Explain better what is Tails).

I'm glad that you phrased your concern but I'll wait and see if it's
shared by others (and most of all by users).

--
sajolida
Tails — https://tails.boum.org/
UX · Fundraising · Technical Writing