The Gist

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.

Will be offline today and tomorrow, attending the
Scientific
Markup Languages Workshop for work. Should be fun.

This picture is cool.

Apple is innovating again. This time they’ve decided to create a lossless
audio format. $DEITY forbid that they should use an existing free format, like
FLAC. Shit like this just fragments
the multimedia market. This is not good for consumers. Of course,
Apple probably needed a format that would support their Digital Restrictions
Management.

This paragraph is for all the people who say that Apple is being a “good
open source citizen”. Apple has caused more harm in the way of proprietary
multimedia formats than Microsoft and Real put together.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask the following question of Apple:
What the fuck is wrong with you?

The person responsible for
this
image should be flogged. That’s not Flash Gordon. That’s Captain
Torch. Sheesh, it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall here.

Alan Cooper has an unhealthy fixation with maximized windows.
That is all.

Quoth Marco:
“Port gnome applications to use gtkmozembed. Mikael ported devhelp already and
I need to convince shaunm to let me port yelp :)”

Let you? Yeah, OK. I’ll let you.

…All Alike. So I’ve decided to assemble gnome-doc-utils to house some common
XSLT (like Yelp’s), some other documentation tools, and some magical m4 files
so we can all stop putting boilerplate .make files in our source trees. The
astute reader will notice a distinct problem here: I don’t have the slightest
clue what I’m doing. I’m now lost somewhere in the autoconf manual, which
has inter-node linking footers like this:

   [ < ][ > ] [ << ][ Up ][ >> ]

I’ll take ‘Less Than Less Than’ for 400, Alex. The node graph also appears
to be constructed using some sort of non-Boolean set theory. And to top it
all off, a pirate just stole my treasure. Sigh.

I am, in fact, a fan of Béla Fleck, and I’m sure that Fleck
Controls does offer an exceptionally broad line of high quality
water treatment controls. But nobody carries the
Fleck name like
John Fleck.

Just doing what I can.

If anybody ever quotes statistics, always ask for the source. If the source
happens to be a survey, always read the survey carefully. They’re usually
worded in a manner that skews the results in somebody’s favor. Here’s an
example:

I just received a Republican Party Census Document. Apparently they think
I’m one of them. This is an understandable mistake, given that I haven’t
really publicly spoken out against Bush in, oh, fifteen minutes or so.
The survey is a series of 15 questions, each with Yes, No,
and Undecided. Here is a sampling of a biased survey:

• Do you support President Bush’s initiatives to promote the safety
  and security of all Americans?
• Do you support President Bush’s pro-growth policies to create more
  jobs and improve the economy?
• Do you support President Bush’s plan to make our schools more
  accountable to parents and to restore local control of education?
• Do you support the President’s plan to increase military spending
  to meet our defense needs?

Right, so the natural implication (to normal people, not mathematicians)
to any of these is that if you say No, you oppose the goal, and
not just the plans in question. The fourth one is even more fun, because
it nicely presupposes that our current defense needs aren’t already met.

The form ends by guilting you into giving them money. Here are the choices:

• Yes, I support the RNC and am enclosing my most generous contribution
  of:
• Yes, I support the RNC, but I am unable to participate at this time.
  However, I have enclosed $11 to cover the cost of tabulating my survey.
• No, I favor electing liberal Democrats over the next ten years.

Huh?