Re: Avoiding the name of an application in Menus?

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2006-02-21 at 16:34 +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> On 21 Feb 2006, at 14:12, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> >
> > I can *sort of* see the reason for this, because you
> > get simpler items in the menu, eg 'Archive Manager'.
> > But the policy isn't carried through system wide,
> > because when you choose that from the menu, up pops a
> > window called 'File Roller'!
> 
> This part was certainly a compromise.  The usability team originally  
> wanted the generic names for core applications to be used throughout  
> the application (except, perhaps, in its About box) as well as on the  
> Applications menu, but some maintainers weren't happy at the prospect  
> of losing their project names.

Writers: Use whatever the application refers to itself as.
If the application can't decide what to call itself, smack
the maintainers.

The generic name thing just makes life difficult for all
but the simplest utility applications.  Yelp gets to be
Help, gcalctool gets to be Calculator, gucharmap gets to
be Character Map.  I'm down with those.  But Evolution and
Epiphany are a different story.  File Roller is in a gray
area.

End of the day, the applications need to be referred to
in more places than just the application menu.  The title
bar, the help, bugzilla, mailing lists and web forums,
etc.  These need to be consistent, and if we can't make
them consistent with the generic name, then we need to
use the real name.

Now, I'm all for saying what an application is in the
menu, regardless of whether we use the real name.  I
have no problems with items like "Epiphany Web Browser".
This is what Sound Juicer does right now: Sound Juicer
CD Ripper.  Best of all worlds.

--
Shaun