On Sa, 2008-03-29 at 12:27 +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> On 28 Mar 2008, at 17:30, daniel g. siegel wrote:
> >
> > now i learned, that it was very confusing to have names like nautilus,
> > epiphany, cheese for a guy, who hears those names for the first
> > time. so
> > it would be better to have menu entries like "Texteditor" (gedit) or
> > "Document viewer" (evince). but then, who would know how the
> > application
> > should be called? how could he then submit a bug report to _that_
> > program? how can the person find the projects website on a search
> > engine? is a program name senseless?
>
> The HIG is fairly clear about the wording of Applications menu entries
> and tooltips::
>
> <http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/desktop-application-menu.html.en#menu-item-functional-description
> >
>
> <http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/desktop-application-menu.html.en#menu-item-tooltips
> >
>
> Historically, when we wrote the HIG we originally wanted all the core
> GNOME desktop apps to have functional names only, to alleviate some of
> this confusion. Thus there would be no "gedit", no "nautilus", no
> "epiphany"; only the GNOME "text editor", "file manager" and "web
> browser".
>
> However, some maintainers (not necessarily the ones I just mentioned,
> FWIW-- I can't actually remember which ones now) saw this as an
> erosion of their project's identity, and weren't willing to make this
> change. So we came to the uneasy compromise of having the functional
> name on the menu, but allowing the project name in the application and
> its documentation. This undoubtedly does confuse some users.
>
> In summary, now that you're a core desktop application and there are
> no other core applications with a similar function, your menu entry
> should not include the word "Cheese". It should be something like
> "Webcam Snapshot" (I'm sure we can do better than that, I haven't
> really woken up yet!), and the tooltip something like "Take photos and
> videos directly from an attached camera". You can use the name
> "Cheese" in the application itself, and in the documentation if that's
> what the current docs guidelines allow, but preferably no more than
> necessary.
i can do that without a problem, BUT i would like to have that
"standarized" over the GNOME desktop. i thought about the 3 things we
use at the moment and i came up with this:
[application name] (e.g. cheese)
+ strong identity for the application
- confusing for people
[application name] [short description] (e.g. f-spot photo manager)
+ enhances the projects identity
+ gives an idea what the application is about
- the application name is confusing for people
- looses its romance (unreal tournament vs. unreal tournament first person shooter game)
[short description] (e.g. text editor)
+ gives an idea what the application is about
- probably not easy to find?
- the project could loose its identity and finding the project page or
bugs page could be more difficult for users
- if several applications, which do the same are installed, this
creates confusion, e.g. firefox and epiphany
now the HIG suggests to use [application name] [short description]
or [short description] if this is possible. could we agree to just use
one of those three mentioned or at least do the same?
daniel
>
> Cheeri,
> Calum.
>
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