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

Just realized that I accidentally only hit "reply" instead of "reply
all" for the following email. In the hope of forwarding the
discussion, here is my response to Jere's comments about screenshot vs
thumbnail semantics...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marcos Caceres <marcosscaceres@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: [widgets] Renaming "thumbnail" to "screenshot"
To: Jere Kapyaho <jere.kapyaho@nokia.com>


Hi Jere,
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Jere Kapyaho <jere.kapyaho@nokia.com> wrote:
> 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

Agreed.

> "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])

This is currently what "thumbnail" is defined as in the spec. That's
why I want to change it to screenshot!

> "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

This is certainly not what is in the spec... my concern is that this
is closer to our definition of icon.

> 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.

Hmm... I think we need to tighten up the terminology in the spec then.

--
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au



-- 
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2009 00:07:07 UTC