Re: desktop file summarization

["Douglas McMorris" <dougmc83 mail utexas edu>]

>> Havoc: The menu entries should always be "Name FunctionalName", as a
>> literal reading of the current HIG suggests.
>
> I agree 100% with the person who said that that's just evil
> grammatically. An Epiphany Web Browser is for browsing the epiphany web,
> an Evolution Address Book is for storing Charles Darwin's phone number,
> and after seeing Pulp Fiction, I don't even want to know what you do
> with a GIMP Image Editor.
>
> (I'm not claiming that people will actually misunderstand the text, I'm
> just saying it makes the menus read like they were poorly translated
> from another language.)
>
> "Name (Generic)" or "Generic (Name)" are both much better. Or even "Name
> - Marketing blather!"
>
>> Jeff,Colin: The menu entries should be FunctionalName, until the
>> system administrator chooses to present 2 of the same FunctionalName
>> applications to the user, in which case we disambiguate in a
>> programmatic fashion.
>
> So if functional names are better than project names, shouldn't the
> startup splash screen just say "Desktop" instead of "GNOME"? Users don't
> care what desktop they're running. :)

This is their point exactly... there are multiple desktops so the name is
used :)

> The other problem with this idea is that the menu text is then at odds
> with *everything else*. The icons often only make sense if you know the
> real name, the windows have the real name of the app, bugzilla only
> refers to the app by its real name, if you have to ask a question on irc
> or wherever, you'll need to know its real name, etc.

The icon issue is addressed by the HIG.  Icons should represent function
and not name.  In windows the real name is used because its commercial
software to branding matters a lot this also follows with the icon.

This is only the menu entries (.desktop files) not the name of the
actually program.  when using the program, help -> about will give you its
name.  if a user can't find that then they probably don't know how to use
bugzilla or irc... i think thats a fair asumption.

>> Seth: All applications which are part of GNOME should simply be
>> renamed entirely, in every user visible way, to FunctionalName.  As a
>> side effect, this ensures that in the default GNOME menu the user will
>> only see FunctionalName.
>
> This gets rid of the consistency problem, but it would be a lot harder
> for us than it is for Microsoft. Eg, Epiphany would have to bump its
> version number to something higher than the last GNOME-shipped version
> of Galeon. And it still leaves things ambiguous for apps that aren't
> part of GNOME but are likely to be in the menus in most distros (eg,
> GIMP). Plus, as Seth noted, the developers will never let it happen. :)

I agree with you here... i think this would be taking it too far.  We're 
only looking to help the user recognize the function of an app while
launching it... once they are in it should be obvious.

> The convention on both Windows and Mac seems to be that "applications"
> often have funky names but "utilities" almost always have obvious names.
> I think that makes sense (and is more likely to get hacker buy-in). No
> user really cares that gucharmap is a completely different codebase from
> gcharmap, so it makes sense to just call both of them "Character Map".
> But you can't just have "Word Processor" be AbiWord in one release and
> OpenOffice in the next (especially if OOo doesn't handle AbiWord files).

I think this should be determined on an use basis.  For example... with a
web browser, it makes perfect sense for you to be able to call it "Web
Browser" as thats exactly what it does and there isnt' much variation
between web browsers, but for something like a word processor, there
should be an app name present.  In general I think a function name should
be use everywhere that it would not be confusing.



> -- Dan
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-- 
<>< ------------------------------------
Douglas McMorris <dougmc83 mail utexas edu>