Re: Freature suggestion for gnome 2.0

["Kevin D. Knerr, Sr." <kknerrsr ptdprolog net>]

On 21 Aug, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> I don't know if this has been suggested before, or not.  I would really
> like to see a switch in the GNOME panel so that users can have the option
> of displaying the "Name" of items in the menu or the "Comment".
> 
> I think that such an option would be a great help to users new to the
> GNOME environment, who will not know that "Seahorse" can be used to
> encrypt files, or that "XMMS" can be used to play mp3's, or probably even
> that "Gnumeric" is a spreadsheet.  Tooltips are an option, sure, but that
> slows people down and is generally irritating (IMHO).

Although the comment field does appear currently in a tooltip. (At
least, it does so on my system--is there a configuration option that's
not set for you?)
 
> As GNOME is packaged now, some items in the menus describe the function of
> the application (e.g. Postscript file viewer) and some just the name of
> the application (e.g. gqview and dia).  For consistancies sake, I think it
> would be good for the Name field of an item contain the name of the
> application, and the Comment field describe the function.

This is really dependent upon the .desktop files being set up
correctly--it seems that in many cases the "comment" is simply a longer
version of the program name, e.g. "Gnumeric" and "Gnumeric spreadsheet".

Is that sufficient for your needs? It seems to me that "XMMS" and "Plays
multimedia files" wouldn't be quite the ticket under your proposal,
since you may well have several multimedia players installed and the
comments might not differentiate them sufficiently. (I.e., more
confusion for the novice, not less.)

On a bit of reflection, I think that it would be better to optionally
*include* the comment in the menu, rather than replace the name with the
comment--if the tooltips are insufficient or too painful.

Regards,

Barthel
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