Re: Remote Desktop - new name?

[Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>]

On Mon, 2004-02-16 at 18:12 +0000, Eugene O'Connor wrote:

> I'm writing documentation on remote desktop. I think we should avoid the
> use of the term "desktop" in this functionality. "Desktop" as a term is
> already overloaded with meanings, and I think it is best to avoid it to
> avoid user confusion around this term (to read the discussions on the
> desktop terms, see the archives for this list).
> 
> So, what to use instead? The options that come immediately to mind for
> me are "session" and "display".
> 
> display: A visual representation of information on a computer screen. A
> display is created on a display device, such as a screen, by a display
> manager application, such as GNOME Display Manager (GDM).
> 
> session: A series of interactions that begins when a user logs in to the
> GNOME Desktop, and ends when the user logs out of the GNOME Desktop.
> 
> I don't think display is a suitable replacement for desktop. For me,
> display suggests that all that is being accessed is the visual
> component, but the user is allowing someone to view or control their
> GNOME Desktop. So I think session is a more suitable term here. It
> conveys that the one who is allowed to view or control will be able to
> interact with the session.
> 
> I would also like to discuss what verb (if any) to use with session. For
> this we need to consider both the user and the sysadmin points-of-view.
> So menu items for the user UI and the Sysadmin UI might look like one of
> the following:
> 
>    User                     Sysadmin 
> 1. Allow Remote Session     Connect to Remote Session
> 2. Share Session            Connect to Session
> 
> "Remote" might not have much meaning for the user, so I think "Share
> Session" is a better choice here.
> 
> What do people think?

I think there is the potential problem of distinguishing between X
sessions and shared sessions so maybe its better to use something else.
People might think: If I end this session, the GNOME session on the host
will end, too. In German, Windows/Samba shares are called "Freigaben"
which is a very good term for shared stuff. Possible backwards
translations (apart from "share") are listed under [1]. I doubt whether
they fit in this context, though.

[1] http://tinyurl.com/27mb2

regs,
 Chris