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Well, here we are all disagreeing (sorry, discussing) again, so for what its
worth, here's my 2 guilders' worth...
Some like dialog and window, but what about "message boxes" - are they
windows too? It seems that all the terms have been inherited from the
original designers (or rather Microsoft, not Xerox), but in the end it
depends on whether you are looking from the inside out or the outside in. In
the stuff I write, I use "window" for virtually everything, whether it is a
main window, secondary, dialog, message, or whatever. Nobody has had any
problems with it yet, and from a medium (i.e. not simple) user's point of
view, these are all windows anyway (at least on Windows, why else is it
called that?). Of course, it is not always necessary to use the term anyway
- "the following message is displayed" makes perfect sense by itself.
Just to start another discussion, should one say that a window "is
displayed", "appears", "will be displayed", or what? Personally, I think the
future tense should not be used, and that "appears" has a rather magical
ring about it.
There you go
Martyn Thirlway
thirlwaym -at- usoft -dot- nl
Author of "Writing Software Documentation - A Practical Guide"
["This writing business, pencils and what-not. Overrated if you ask me."
Eeyore]
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