Re: Application names in menus

[Sander Vesik <Sander Vesik Sun COM>]

On Thu, 1 Aug 2002 snickell stanford edu wrote:

> > 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.
> 

Good point - We'll do that whenever we have gnome2 .desktop files.

> 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". 
> 

Actually, if you take a look at the names of the items in File->New,
functional names should pretty easily present themselves. So you would
have 'OpenOffice.org Text Document', 'OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet' ...
with the the added benefit that what you see from the UI is the same as
the gnome menus. But there may not be a need for such long names - just
create a submenu 'OpenOffice.org 1.0' and put the shorter names under
that. 

<legalese>OpenOffice is a trademark owned by its respective owner (which
is not Sun or OpenOffice.org, thus instead of 'OpenOffice'
'OpenOffice.org' should be used everywhere</legalese>.

> 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.
> 

And what fun if the user downmloads an update or later version and
suddenly has incomprehensibly multiplied sets of items all of which say
the same thing, except in slightly different ways... From a signle user
experience point of view, it would be best if it was presented the same
everywhere, but I suspect the OpenOffice.org marketing folks may insist on
the 'branded' "Writer", "Impress", etc names. 

> 
> -Seth
> 

	Sander

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