Help inappropriately refers to "indicators"

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

ubuntu-docs 12.04.2, Ubuntu Pangolin

Most of the help correctly refers to the "messaging menu", "sound menu", "battery menu" and so on.

However, the front page of the help features a link to a page "Manage apps and settings with Indicator Menus".

There are two problems with this. First, "indicator" is a developer term, and a vague one at that. It should not appear in user-facing text.

Second, whether a task involves an indicator menu depends on how frequently and/or urgently you do it. There is nothing else common to all of the menus, so it is not useful to refer to them collectively, or to say that they let you "manage apps and settings". (Arguably the Launcher lets you "manage apps and settings" much more than the indicator menus do.)

It might make sense to have a page for "What are the icons at the top right or the screen?", or maybe for that to be part of an introductory cheat sheet for all the different parts of the screen. But they shouldn't be referred to as "indicators".

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

This has been improved for Ubuntu 12.10.
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.10/ubuntu-help/
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.10/ubuntu-help/unity-menubar-intro.html

I do like the "active voice" and parallelism of the following:
| Use the launcher to start applications
| Find apps, files, music, and more with the dash
| Manage apps & settings with the menu bar

I don't think that replacing that with
| What are the icons at the top right of the screen?
| What are the icons at the left of the screen?
| What's the button in the top left of the screen?
is an improvement.

We also already do discuss the "indicator" status menus as appropriate in context (except for the messaging menu) but I think it's useful to group the information in one place too.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Closing this as "Fixed Released". For possible further need to discuss the terminology used, please file a new bug report.