<command> vs <application>

Karsten Wade kwade at redhat.com
Thu Sep 8 17:41:36 UTC 2005


On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 11:28 -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> Your understanding is correct.  Although this harkens back to a Red Hat
> documentation team convention -- AIUI -- it also reflects the fact that
> <command>s are what you type in a terminal to run that program.
> Examples include <command>yum</command> and <command>emacs</command>.
> This is not always the case for <application>s.  (Emacs brings up an
> interesting case.  I suppose that you could really do
> <application>Emacs</application> if you wanted to, since there is in
> fact a GUI version.)  

I don't know all the history, but the practice is, if the command line
typing produces a GUI, you use <application>.  So, yes, you do this:

"After installing the <filename>emacs</filename> package, the
<command>emacs &</command> command opens the
<application>Emacs</application> window as a stand-alone GUI."

do s/filename/package/ when the <package> tag is in our DTD.

> The FDP
> convention is to always point users to GUI tools where possible.

Yes, with caveats.

It is possible to write a guide that is entirely CLI or entirely GUI, or
shows both solutions.  The guide should be i) consistent, and ii)
clearly state the audience and method.

Readers should know up-front what method is in use.

That said, tutorials for users who want to use GUIs exclusively are in
more demand than tutorials that use the CLI.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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