Re: Application names

[Karl Lattimer <karl qdh org uk>]

On Sat, 2009-08-08 at 16:29 -0400, William Jon McCann wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> So, in preparation for GNOME Shell and 3.0 a number of us have been
> trying to address various inconsistencies in how we name applications.
> 
> I've just posted a blog about this:
> http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2009/08/08/whatchamacallit/
> 
> My proposal for 2.28 is:
> 
>    1. We need to patch the panel to support showing both Name and
> Generic Name to workaround the fact that menus are very poor ways to
> discover new things.
>        - http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501087
> 
>    2. We need to fix a lot of our desktop files to use Name and
> GenericName correctly:  GNOME Goal,  tracker bug, Fedora wiki page.
>        - http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/CorrectGenericName
>        - http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=588975
>        - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/Whiteboards/ApplicationNames

I wrote a patch to allow the panel to edit GenericName tags over 2 years
ago now; http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=426196

With this patch applied, it becomes a little more accessible for those
who'd like to edit their .desktop files GenericName tags, and maybe
assist in promoting this aspect of the specification to developers of
apps.

I've always seen fixing our .desktop editor as the first step to getting
this done, but it's never that easy :( On a few occasions I've tried to
push on this also. It generally ends up in bike-shedding over presenting
the menu items in the menubar and related i18n and ally issues. 

I imagine the patch would still apply to the panel, if not it's not much
work. 

Good luck with this, I really hope this gets fixed as it's not just SLAB
menu which is broken because GNOME doesn't implement this portion of the
spec, it's a big usability issue... e.g. What's Agave?

BR,
 K