[Usability] Re: desktop entry names, generic?

[Bryan Clark <bclark redhat com>]

On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 18:37 -0400, Julian Missig wrote:
> On 16 Jun 2004, at 18:14, Bryan Clark wrote:
> *SNIP*
> > This separation of the two names provides us with the ability to give
> > functional names to applications when there is only one application
> > installed (having only one image viewer means that "Joe Image Viewer"
> > displays as "Image Viewer".  This also gives proper names to
> > applications when there is more than one installed (having two image
> > viewers would display what each applications name is, "Joe Image 
> > Viewer"
> > and "Crackbox Image Viewer").
> >
> > Problem being that in this discussion came the idea that the GNOME base
> > applications should carry only the GNOME brand.  When I say the GNOME
> > brand, what I mean is _no brand at all_.  So if "Joe Image Viewer" is
> > part of the desktop release and the default GNOME Image Viewer it's 
> > menu
> > item name remains "Image Viewer", no matter how many other Image Viewer
> > applications are installed in parallel.  Now when the user installs
> > "Crackbox Image Viewer" the "Joe Image Viewer" retains the name "Image
> > Viewer" as it's 'brand' or proper name is to be a part of the desktop.
> >
> > As a short side note to this of course is that if the user uninstalled
> > "Joe Image Viewer", then the "Crackbox Image Viewer" would display it's
> > generic name "Image Viewer" because it would be the only application of
> > that generic name.
> 
> Couldn't this cause a *LOT* of confusion when users start saying "Image 
> Viewer" is broken, it has bug x. Or someone reviews Gnome and talks 
> about lack of support of feature x in "Image Viewer" --- because of all 
> these cases you've given, we'll have *no idea* which "Image Viewer" the 
> user is talking about. They may have multiple installed and thus be 
> talking about the Gnome-blessed "Joe Image Viewer" or they may not have 
> had "Joe Image Viewer" installed with their distribution for one reason 
> or another an thus were using "Crackbox Image Viewer" all along--and 
> they never even knew it. Now we wouldn't even be able to easily tell 
> without having them start the application and tell us what the window 
> title is (assuming window titles don't follow the same convention!).

The only  case of confusion to happen here's would have to work like
this:
  The user installs Crackbox, un-installs Joe and then goes to the
bugzilla interface and writes a bug report saying that the Image Viewer
is broken.

I'd guess this is a relatively low occurrence.

What really happens is that Bug Buddy does the reporting, in which case
it knows what application it is from the .desktop file.  (see the X-
GNOME-Bugzilla-Product field)

As it stands right now the EOG Image Viewer has been had the menu name
Image Viewer for quite some time without this confusion.  The GNOME
Bugzilla bug report lists EOG as "Eye of Gnome image viewer and
cataloging program", so "Image Viewer" is fairly easy to find with a
"Web Browser" ;-) that has text search.

In the case of a different distribution then hopefully the would fill
out the distribution field correctly in bugzilla so we would know what
kind of Image Viewer they are talking about.  This one _could_ be tricky
since we never know what those l33t G3nt00 users might do :)  A kinder
world would have those distributions with their own bug servers
filtering through their packaging bugs from application bugs.

And the window titles should follow this same convention, I'm hoping we
get that part worked out soon too. 

The About Dialogs will always have the applications proper name
displayed, so it will be a matter of 3 clicks (one to open the app, one
click on Help and one more on About) to find out what Image Viewer they
are really running. 

> I certainly understand the intent, but I think this could lead to lots 
> of confusion in another direction...

I'm glad you see the benefit and I understand there could be gotchas
with this, but I think the payoff for the users can be tremendous and
worth it.

Cheers,
~ Bryan