In response to Bryan Clark’s Fear
and Loathing in .desktop:
Only applications that are a part of the GNOME Desktop should take the
Generic Name in their launcher and title bar, when other applications due
[sic] this it is a bug and yes it *is* confusing. Third party applications
that are installed are not part of the GNOME Desktop and therefore should
have their Product Name displayed to show that they are an addition to what
GNOME already has.
Do let’s keep in mind that it’s not our menu. It’s the freedesktop.org
menu. When Epiphany sets its Name to ‘Web Browser’, it shows up that way
in any desktop that uses the freedesktop.org menu. If a user is running
KDE, she’ll see Epiphany as Web Browser. If a user is running XFCE, she’ll
see Epiphany as Web Browser. A little pretentious of us, don’t you think?
This is a serious interoperability problem, not to mention the fact that
it completely breaks the specification.
Why does the user have both KDE and GNOME installed, you ask? I don’t know.
Maybe it’s a stock Fedora install, which installs both. Maybe it’s a big
corporate environment or university where the admins have decided that users
can choose which desktop to run. Maybe Unix is a multi-user operating
system. I hate having to remind people that Unix is a multi-user
operating system.
Help – Contents should bring up the Help Browser where it would
display GNOME Email and Calendaring.
Yes, fine, it should. And while we’re at it, Help should contain
more than a single link, and Contents isn’t all that descriptive. But
there is still a listing of available documents. The documentation team
is constantly having to chase the latest whim of how to rename everything
on the desktop. If we call Epiphany ‘Web Browser’, then the listing of
the documentation needs to be ‘Web Browser Manual’ or some such. And the
document itself should talk about ‘Web Browser’. You have effectively
renamed Epiphany to ‘Web Browser’.
That’s fine. We can do that. People haven’t been doing it, but we
can do it. But that brings us right back to the same interoperability
problem. The fact that the documentation systems don’t interoperate
right now is irrelevant. We want them to, and they will just as soon
as I find time to work on it again. Why make things harder for something
that is clearly a good future goal?
Ugh, you *do* know which web browser you have installed just by
looking at them. You have Web Browser, Firefox Web Browser, Galeon Web
Browser, Opera Web Browser, and Mozilla Web Browser. If you’re looking
for Epiphany just get used to the fact that it’s the default, by being
so web browser savvy (i.e. having 5 installed), it would be safe to
assume that you know which one each browser really is.
Again, right back to the multi-user thing. Let’s face it, we’re not
taking over the home market any time soon. Large multi-user deployments
are probably our biggest market right now. I didn’t install five browsers;
my sysadmin did.
Possible Solution the First
One possible solution is that applications always put a real,
honest-to-goodness name in the Name field. Epiphany is ‘Epiphany Web
Browser’. Rhythmbox is ‘Rhythmbox Music Player’. The panel can then
have a list of blessed GNOME application, and display generic names for
those application. That way, Epiphany will show up as ‘Web Browser’
in GNOME, but still show up as ‘Epiphany Web Browser’ in KDE.
But this gives us a magic morphing interface, which as a rule, are
virtually impossible to write documentation for. Now what do I call
Epiphany in the documentation? Epiphany? Web Browser? What does its
listing in ScrollKeeper say?
Possible Solution the Better
Have each application always put a real, honest-to-goodness
name in the Name field. Then, we always display that. But,
at the top of the Internet menu, we can put a faux ‘Web Browser’ entry.
This entry would launch your preferred web browser, which of course
defaults to Epiphany. We can do the same thing with Email. Put the
magic entries at the top of the menu, and maybe make them visually
distinct or something. So Epiphany is still there as Epiphany, but
we also get the nice ‘Web Browser’ thing.
This has the advantage of making the ‘Web Browser’ entry really do
what people expect it to do. It also makes quick, visually distinct
launchers for the common applications. Now I don’t have to look
through a dozen or so items in Internet for Web Browser and Email
(probably the two most common Internet things). I’ve got pretty
launchers right at the top of the menu.
Best of all, we can actually do something with this in documentation.
I could actually do similar cleverness in the documentation listing.
Generally, I can do some rather clever things to the listing of docs,
but there’s not a whole lot I can do to the docs themselves.
