I agree that "Raw Text" is confusing.

A good fraction of notebook users never touch nbconvert. For those users,
the phrase "nbconvert output" means little, if anything.  Even in the
context of nbconvert, calling this output is confusing. It is really input
from a user that nbconvert passes through unmodified to its output.

In the notebook UI, it is in fact plain, unformatted, unrendered text.

What about the following. In the Notebook UI, we refer to these in a way
that reflects their usage in the Notebook UI - maybe Unrendered Text?  If
we want to stick with the output idea, I do think that "Raw nbconvert
output" is better though.

This also makes me think that one of the metadata values for these cells,
in addition to html, rst, latex, should be verbatim/pre.  In that case it
would simply dump the content of the cell into a pre if html or verbatim if
latex. But maybe that violates the pass-through aspect of these cells.





On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Min RK <notifications@github.com> wrote:

> In IPython/html/templates/notebook.html:
>
> > @@ -126,7 +126,7 @@
> >                      <ul class="dropdown-menu">
> >                        <li id="to_code"><a href="#">Code</a></li>
> >                        <li id="to_markdown"><a href="#">Markdown </a></li>
> > -                      <li id="to_raw"><a href="#">Raw Text</a></li>
> > +                      <li id="to_raw"><a href="#">Raw Output</a></li>
>
> We have proof that "Raw Text" is confusing to people, perhaps because it
> is simply not accurate.
> A raw cell is always raw nbconvert *output* (html, rst, latex, etc. - it
> is never plain text).
>
> Many people interpret 'Raw Text' as 'Unformatted Text', aka <pre>, which
> is totally sensible based on the label. But this is not what Raw Cells are.
> Raw Cells are, by definition, raw nbconvert output.
>
> Obviously, there is some ambiguity between Code Cell output and nbconvert
> output, but I think Raw Output is less confusing than Raw Text. Do you have
> a better alternative? Should we be extremely explicit and label them raw
> nbconvert output, since that is what they are?
>
> —
> Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<https://github.com/ipython/ipython/pull/4306/files#r6872554>
> .
>



-- 
Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com