Re: Gnome desktop files doesn't follow the freedesktop standards

["Seth Nickell" <seth gnome org>]

people, but... If you have two
> browsers installed, and we can assume that the user chose to do that 
> (any
> sane distro or admin provided system would only have one), we could 
> also
> assume that they know their names. It also avoids i18n issues.

Sanity and sysadmin are not necessarily words that belong together. But 
beyond that I found from interviewing admins that they are always under 
pressure to install different flavours of applications. Often they say 
'no' (usu for their own sanity, not usability) but I don't know if you 
can expect this for many apps.

Beyond that, things changing names in response to installation is really 
quirky.

Maybe I didn't make the intention clear enough in the hig:

If your app is THE gnome application for doing X, it should be called X. 
If its one of many possible add-ons to Gnome, it should be Name X.

The names we use for apps are often more akin to codenames used 
internally for products during development. E.g. The codebase behind, 
say, windows media player changes and each codebase had its own cute 
name that developers used.

Unfortunately in the free software world, more of our guts are visible 
(tarballs, cvs, mailing lists) so marketing of the "codename" becomes 
important to some developers.  Honestly, I think a lot of resistance 
comes from the idea of the maintainer having to rename their app to this 
boring generic form.... Also cvs makes a full renaming a PITA.

So I don't really know solutions to these grumps and the squashing of 
mainainer creativity and the peskiness of mass renaming.... But I'm 
pretty sure its best (and a big imporvement, not just a dinky thing) 
from a usability standpoint.
-Seth