Re: [widgets] Renaming "thumbnail" to "screenshot"

Hi Marcos,

please don't rename "thumbnail" to "screenshot"... because an icon is not a
thumbnail is not a screenshot. I think the terminology is already quite well
established, and these three are all different anyway.

FWIW, to me the semantics break down like this:

"icon" -- small, representative image of application or document, used for
starting up or organizing
"screenshot" -- an image that shows software as it was in action, typically
the size of the program's normal window (or a detail of it) (see [1])
"thumbnail" -- small, scaled-down replica of an application, image or
document, typically used to save display space, so that several of these can
be shown side by side to get an overall view of a collection

So, an icon is just representative; it is not the real thing. Ideally, a
thumbnail would be generated live in real time, and some Widgets
implementations might choose to so. If the package includes a static
thumbnail (which is by definition a screenshot at that point), that fact
shouldn't prevent the implementation from generating/updating the thumbnail
live.

--Jere

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot


On 26.1.2009 15.29, "ext Marcos Caceres" <marcosscaceres@gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> Hi Charles,
> 
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Charles McCathieNevile
> <chaals@opera.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:27:47 +0100, Marcos Caceres
>> <marcosscaceres@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> I would like to rename "thumbnail" to "screenshot" in the packaging
>>> spec. As the thumbnail "graphically represents the widget in a running
>>> state" it makes more sense to call it a screenshot.
>> 
>> I don't think so - a screenshot is generally a static image while a
>> thumbnail is just a small representative image. I don't think that any
>> improvement in semantics justifies changing the spec for this.
> 
> We already have the <icon> element as the small representative image
> for the widget, which is why I think screenshot is less confusing than
> thumbnail.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Marcos

Received on Monday, 26 January 2009 14:09:40 UTC