Re: Application names in menus

[snickell stanford edu]

> there are quite a few places that do this display (in GNOME and
> in KDE) and they would all have to be changed - this is the main
> reason we are "just using Name" in Red Hat right now I guess. It was
> too hard to fix everything to use a new algorithm.

ah, ok, a logistics issue.
 
> There are also some cases where the two part name is really long
> and seems sort of redundant:
> 
>  OpenOffice Impress Presentation Application

"Application" should not be included, but yeah.

>  OpenOffice Writer Word Processor
> 
> Personally I think just "OpenOffice Writer" is better, for
> example. i.e. only Name. But then for e.g. the Fonts capplet I
> wanted
> only GenericName.

Given that its an either/or situation there's no reason that OpenOffice
.desktop files could only set the Name field. Similarly, the font
preference page would only set a "GenericName". The HIG gives some
guidelines for when to use only a generic name.

However... That said, its shitty that OpenOffice's file names are so
long that you can't append a generic description because they are *not*
in general descriptive enough themselves. I have no clue what an
"impress" is. "Writer" is better, but still not really satisfactory. I
can at least *guess* reasonably what "writer" is: still not as good as
"word processor". 

Having both the suite name AND a not-fully-functional name is excessive
over-glorification of the software. Its not really helping the user, its
helping the programmers/marketers/whoever is pushing these sorts of
names feel better. Personally, I would recommend having "OpenOffice Word
Processor", "OpenOffice Presentation" (or maybe "OpenOffice
Presenter"?), "OpenOffice Spreadsheet", etc. The OpenOffice branding is
much stronger than the branding of the individual components (i.e. than
the "Impress" or "Writer" branding), and is what user's will probably
actually be using to differentiate it from other "Word processors". But
of course, these sorts of things are not within my perogative (they are,
however, in RedHat's control). So IMO, usually the problem when "Name
GenericName" becomes a real quirky mouthful is that the people producing
the software are full of beans and have chosen an excessive name.

BTW, for future naming, I would really recommend people avoid
pseudo-functional names like "AbiWord", because they aren't quite enough
(I can guess what AbiWord does from the name, but not nearly as well as,
say, "Abi Word Processor"), but they feel slightly redundant when the
functional description is appended (in AbiWord's case I think it still
should be done). Its better to stick with a namey-name like Gnumeric and
affixing a good functional description to that, or a purely functional
name (like, say, Volume Control).

-Seth