GNU/Human Unstable

As I'm seeing today in his blog, Nat Friedman got it clear:


For example, we asked a lady to send mail to a friend. Against all odds, she started Evolution (nothing in the menus indicates that it's a mail program; something we hadn't realized before but which was immediately obvious after watching her stalk one-by-one through the menu items muttering to herself along the way).


I can't remember how many times we struggled with the icons issue in gnuLinEx. Perhaps it was (and it is) the most polemic issue in the distribution. And to be honest, I wasn't sure about it in the beginning. But the Evolution thing it's a great example. Ok, perhaps "Guadalupe" (the name of Evolution in LinEx) it's not very obvious for everyone, but "Guadalupe, Correo Electrónico" (Guadalupe, e-mail client), which is the complete icon name, certainly is more friendly than plain "Evolution".
And forget it if somebody tries to make a person who never spoke english or used a computer to pronounce (and to remember) a name like "OpenOffice.org Writer". It's just not going to happen.


My point is: if this lady, who I suppose can read english, had trouble finding an e-mail client, how could someone who can't read english find it? It's like wander in the menus of a japanese video game.



i18n applies for icons too.