Re: Bug#794936: installation-guide: claims it will use "CD-ROM" as cover-term then doesn't
Joachim Wiedorn wrote:
> Justin B Rye wrote:
>> The idea is, instead of constantly saying either "CDs" or "CDs/DVDs",
>> seemingly at random, when what it means is "optical media of any sort
>> whether that's CD, DVD, or BD", it should instead do what it announces
>> it's going to do: use "CD-ROM" as an official generic cover-term.
>>
>> It's not a simple search-and-replace job, since sometimes "CD" really
>> means "CD". Here's a commented version of the patch.
>
> I think about other media too, e.g. USB-Stick. Perhaps it would be
> better to only say "media", or "optical media" and "flash media"?
Can you give examples? We can't replace all uses of "CD-ROM" with
"media" because much of the time we're distinguishing between
different types of media.
We hardly seem to mention solidstate/flash/memory cards anywhere, even
though machines that can boot off them could use them for "USB
installs". We probably do need a coverterm for cards-and-USB-drives,
so it's a pity Adobe have made "flash media" so thoroughly ambiguous.
"Optical media" would make a plausible alternative in many of the
places where my patch standardises on "CD-ROMs", but while it's
unambiguous it is distinctly technical.
Meanwhile the English word "media" causes problems in the many cases
where we need a singular. In English, "a medium" is a *type* of media
(or a spiritualist). A single floppy isn't "a medium", it's an
individual item of media, and that rapidly gets clunky.
In the case of optical media we can also use the word "discs" as
opposed to "disks" - but few non-techies are aware of this slightly
crazy spelling distinction, so we can't rely on it.
* * *
Upshot: we'll probably want another patch to handle flash drives, but
first we'd need to work out what it says, and we don't need to delay
the CD-ROM patch for that.
Once I get round to doing my final sweep of Priority: wishlist changes
just to make it sound better, I might introduce a few more uses of
"discs" and "optical media" to reduce repetition.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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