[drupal-docs] Customizing applications pages - was: minor correction

[Boris Mann]

On 9-May-05, at 11:06 PM, Kieran Lal wrote:

>> Not really sure you are benefiting the end user, the individual
>> Drupal Admin, by calling something an application instead of a
>> module.  Perhaps when you submit the feature request, it could be
>> done like node where in the Drupal install itself, a node is always
>> referred as a post...
>
> Yeah, and Ghandi should have worn British cloth until the British
> agreed to move the textile industries to India.  No, sorry I don't
> want to ask permission from the Drupal elitists.  I want to use a
> word that makes sense to the long tail that are part of the tens of
> thousands of Drupal users,  and not just one that makes sense to the
> top 300.

They're not applications. Do you double-click and they run? They  
don't stand alone. Some of them don't even directly DO anything that  
regular folks would recognize (the Drupal module is probably a good  
example).

Drupal/CivicSpace is an application. And your search for "blog  
application" is exactly the wrong thing! The blog *module* inside of  
Drupal/CivicSpace creates blog-like functionality. "community  
application" or some such would be an apt term for the entire system.

The things inside are modules, because they provide modular  
functionality.

IMHO, the word "application" in this context is more misleading than  
the word module. This is a piece of terminology that must be learned  
in the context of web applications, I believe. The terminology page  
(see http://drupal.org/node/937) is quite short, and I don't think is  
too high a barrier to using the system. It could do with some edits,  
of course.

How do you add functionality to the Drupal application? By adding  
modules. Other large scale systems call these modular bits of  
functionality modules as well (ref: SAP -- http://www.thespot4sap.com/ 
Articles/SAP_Modules.asp).

If you would like to market them as applications, by all means do  
so...but not inside the viewpoint-neutral documentation of the system.

--
Boris Mann
http://www.bmannconsulting.com