List of Key End User Terms we need to get right

[Very rough draft and incomplete]

• Capplet - [OI] Is a capplet:
  • an overall application functionality of an information item type; or
  • a specific document/view centering around an information item type
  • do we have a need to distinguish the above?

• Cluster - a structured collection of items related to a specific context known only to the user (i.e. Chandler itself has no specific semantics of the context)

• StampingWorkflow - the act of marking an item of a certain type to be strongly linked to an information item of another type (e.g. tasks can be stamped with calendar)

• Independent Grouping (for items) [aka Orthogonal Buckets]

-- ChaoLam - 15 Nov 2003

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Terminology Questions -- circa 16 Nov 2003

Ideally, we'd like to have a single set of terminology shared by the design team, the engineering team, and the end users. In a perfect world, the word "document" would mean the same thing to all these different people.

The engineering team is about to do a re-org of both the CVS directory structure and the repository containment path structure. Unfortunately, these things are difficult to change, so it's painful to do iterative refinement. They're trying to do a number of changes in one fell swoop, and hopefully get it as right as possible, so as to minimize of changes later on.

If we'd like to settle on any new standard terminology, now would be a good time, before the old terminology is set in stone in the CVS directory structure.

Here's their pending ZeroPointThreeDirectoryStructureProposal.

Here are some terms we might want to talk about:

• "document" -- a CPIA document
  • issue: we might want to save "document" to mean something like a word processor docuemnt
  • alternatives: "view", "frame", "layout", "page", "facet", "vista", "perspective"...

• "information item"
  • issue: long and cumbersome, and not especially descriptive (after all, aren't all items really just information)
  • alternatives: "item", "content item", "infoitem", "user item", "classifiable item"

• "parcel" -- a glob of schema definitions, documents, and python code
  • issues: conceptually similar to a Capplet or a CPIA Context
  • questions:
    • What's the difference between a Capplet and a CPIA Context?
    • What's the difference between a CPIA Context and a Document?
    • What's the difference between a Capplet and a Parcel?

• "templates" -- the default documents a new user sees (e.g. Month View)
  • issue: might want to save the word "template" for something else

• "repository" -- the code for the repository server (analogous to a traditional DBMS (Database Management System))
  • issue: might want to save the word "repository" to mean the datastore itself (analogous to a traditional DB (Database))
  • issue: users might be more familiar with "database" than with "repository"
  • alternatives: "database", "datastore", "itemstore", "archive", "repository server", "data server"

• capplet names -- if we have separate silo capplets, what should their names be?
  • "Contact", "Contacts", "Address Book"
  • "Calendar"
  • "Email", "E-mail", "Mail" -- Mozilla and Outlook both use "Mail"
  • "Task", "Tasks", "TaskPad", "To Do List", "To-Do List", "To Do"
  • "Note", "Notes", "NotePad"

• "osaf"
  • issue: In the code, it will get harder to change this as time goes on. Maybe OSAF is a fine name, but if we want to change it we shouldn't wait until right before 1.0.

Resolutions -- circa 17 Nov 2003

• "view" -- a CPIA view (formerly called "document")
• "content item" -- formerly called "information item")
• "parcel"
• "repository" -- a single user's data, stored on a single machine (the DB, not the DBMS)
• "view templates" -- the default documents a new user sees (e.g. Month View)
• capplet names -- if we have separate silo capplets, what should their names be?
  • "Contacts"
  • "Calendar"
  • "Mail"
  • "Tasks"
  • "Notes"
• "osaf"

• Questions
  • What's the difference between a Capplet and a CPIA Context?
  • What's the difference between a CPIA Context and a View?
  • What's the difference between a Capplet and a Parcel?
• Answers
  • There's a 1-to-1 relationship between a Capplet and a CPIA Context. Every Context belongs to a Capplet. Each Capplet has a Context. Each Capplet also has other stuff, like parcels and views and whatnot.
  • Each Context can have many Views that use that Context.
  • Each Capplet has a corresponding Parcel that it is delivered in, but a Parcel may not be a Capplet. Some Parcels are Capplet Parcels, but other Parcels might be used for other things.

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Contributors

• BrianDouglasSkinner - 17 Nov 2003