Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.We desperately need to pick (and then standardize on) a term to use for a "project" -- a set of modules or themes that's packaged into a single archive which you can download, install, and upgrade.
Similarly (although different), we need a generic term for what each sub-element of these projects are, e.g. individual modules and themes.
In a confusing mix, all of the following have been used or proposed at various times for either of these things:
A) project
B) plugin
C) add-on
Coming to agreement on this is a prerequisite for fixing most of the UI bugs and tasks http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?issue_tags_op=and&issue_t... now that #538660: Move update manager upgrade process into new authorize.php file (and make it actually work) is in core, so I'm calling this critical since it's blocking progress on other issues.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #13 | 606646-13.available_update_report_project_ui.png | 119.85 KB | dww |
Comments
Comment #1
Paul Natsuo Kishimoto commented"package"
Comment #2
Paul Natsuo Kishimoto commentedSorry, to be less terse:
One works on a project, but users don't necessarily work on modules on themes...they only use them.
Add-on, as a verb, is a rough synonym for "install", which only describes what a user does the first time (s)he uses a module or theme. Thereafter they become an integral part of the Drupal installation. On the other hand, this is the umbrella term used by Mozilla and might therefore be familiar to users.
Plugin...no real semantic objection. Maybe this sounds good to developers, who think "plug(ged) in (to an (application programming) interface)". Wikipedia offers extension as a synonym.
Comment #3
JacobSingh commentedI think the honest truth is that users would rather see "theme" or "module" - but I like extension as there are cases where we need a word (and the code does too).
Comment #4
JacobSingh commentedI'm sorry, I will never blog, "Check out my package, it rocks" :) Seriously... although the other options also sound weird in that sentence. Perhaps we need different criteria.
Let's look around the interwebs:
IMO the best known plugin-system is probably the iPhone these days. apps
2nd might be firefox add-ons AND themes
WP has Plugin and theme
I guess because we have multiple modules in a "whatever" it isn't totally appropriate to use the words "module" and "theme" throughout. We also do not need to use the same term in code and developer docs as we offer in the UI. Trying to do this will end up with a WTF for both groups I think.
I'd say for developers, pacakge is better than project. A Project can have teams, leaders, organization, etc. But When I download a tarball, it's a package.
For end-users we are kinda stuck with module to describe a group of modules and theme to describe a group of themes. This is mainly because of how d.o. is structured. Should we try to change this? How?
Comment #5
Bojhan commentedI do strongly agree with Jakob, we can come up with magical well descriptive terms but in the end people are going to look for Modules and themes, lets instead work on bringing these words into our interface - is the best strategy.
Comment #6
arlinsandbulte commentedI suggest keeping the terms relatively the same as current:
Project: Can be either a Module or Theme or Translation. I might be open to eliminating project completely and refering to everything as a Module or Theme or Translation. (But, then, where does core Drupal go?)
Module:
Sub-module: Module components that come with the main Module
Theme: The overall theme package
Sub-theme: Themes that come with the main theme
Translation: I'm not very familiar with this, but the way it is seems ok to me.
That just my 2 cents...
Comment #7
Paul Natsuo Kishimoto commentedThe iPhone is the best-known plugin system? That's a pretty strong statement :P
The words app (instead of application), and the title of app store have been reused by a host of Apple imitators. It would be nice if Drupal wasn't among them.
@Bohjan, arlinsandbulte: This issue is to find a generic noun, so that instead of saying "modules and themes" one can use only one word. In some places in the interface where full sentences are used as explanatory text, "modules and themes" can be written in full; but in some titles and other places, it is too cumbersome.
Comment #8
Bojhan commented@Paul I get that is the point, and I am saying that is wrong. If its to cumbersome, change the UI.
Comment #9
dwwOkay Bojhan, then please suggest a non-cumbersome UI for the following screenshot:
http://drupal.org/files/issues/plugin_php-538660-96.worst-case-update-pa...
You want "modules or themes" on every heading on there? There was a big fight at one point about putting modules and themes into the same tables, so separate tables for "Enabled modules" vs. "Enabled themes" is out (unless we re-hash that fight).
(See #602496: Clean up the update manager project selector page when updating your site)
Comment #10
alexanderpas commentedsometimes, the answer is staring you right in the face:
How about: Component
- we're already using it with this meaning in the core issue queue.
- "The following components have updates availble"
- "Enabled Components"
- "Disabled Components"
- "All components are up-to-date"
Comment #11
Bojhan commented@alexanderpas Sorry, but what we use in the issue queue is by no means representative to what the user should see. I do not see components beign rather descriptive. You probally dont know this, but actually 35% of our users do not understand component and quit the form (in the issue queue comming from web analytics). So I would really not like to go down that path
@dww I already advised in a very early version of the mockups to put themes right in the box with modules and just calling it modules and putting (Theme) behind the name. Theme is simply so uncommon, and I think people will be less confused by it then using a completely new label.
I am keeping my foot strong here, in saying we should have Module and Theme. Anything else we come up with is going to confuse on some level.
Comment #12
dww@Bojhan: Ok, fair enough. Then what do you call a project? The thing you download that includes N modules or themes?
Comment #13
dwwJust had a long discussion in IRC about this with Bojhan, catch, and JacobSingh. The basic summary:
A) No new generic term for either a module or a theme. The UI should always be specific, and refer to "modules", "themes" or "modules and themes" as appropriate.
B) Of all the alternatives for "project", none of them are great. Generally, the agreement was "project" is fine, although "package" got some support.
Here's an example of the help text and UI on the available updates report where we're already using the "project" terminology:
Should we just leave it like this, or move to something else?
Comment #14
Bojhan commentedWe can probally work on some copywriting improvement of the description but lets leave that to another issue. Seems fine, to ellaborate on why package wasn't choosen. It didn't seem wortwhile, that this functionality would require the user to learn a new word - its not critical enough to do that.
Comment #15
Paul Natsuo Kishimoto commented@Bojhan: that's a good reason. Is this "won't fix" then?
Comment #16
dwwOk, let's call it fixed. The standard language for "project" is "project". There's no single term for "module or theme", instead, we just say "module" or "theme" or "module or theme" as appropriate depending on the context. We could almost call this "by design". ;)