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> One is at a loss to explain why a deplorable or disapproved-of function
was
> included in the software in the first place. A propos of such a
judgemental
> term, may I suggest
Its very common to phase out features of products that are either no
longer used or no longer in-demand in a product.
"Depreciated function" or "feature" is actually quite common. End-users
might barf on it - but then why would you tell them that a function was
nearing its death in the first place? You never want to reveal such
information to users. They'll find out soon enough when they get the next
revision and the feature is no longer there.
If you're writing support or engineering docs - use this term.
We had a similar issue with the term "promiscuous packet capture." Among
network geeks, this is a well-known term. But to lay-people, it sounds
icky. So for the retail user docs and help systems we used the term
"active packet capture." For all the higher-end products, we stuck with
promiscuous packet capture. Know thy audience.
Andrew Plato
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