Use of library names (Akonadi, Solid, Nepomuk, Phonon etc.) in user interfaces

[Tom Albers]

Hi,

> Names for some "behind the scenes" KDE libraries/daemons are creeping
> into user interfaces.

Which is good. We spent a lot of time investing in promoting those words, and the user should see them in the interface too, to actually identify that we are not about words, but actually implemented stuff. 

Nepomuk is the big example. No-one understands what it is. Even when you are actually tagging in dolphin, you have no clue, you are using nepomuk. Which is bad. If you want it to be a bigger success, users should be confronted with it.

I can not understand that the marketing dudes would agree with your proposal. But it's similar too the discussion to branded vs generic icons, which we had a while back to this list. Which I also did not agree too. 

We spent a lot of time in promoting the "pilars of KDE", let's please not tear them down.

> - Users who are not KDE-tech enthusiasts seeing these would be
> somewhat mystified.  To give an idea of what
> I mean, imagine how odd it would seem if Apple's next Safari release
> had an "Enable Squirrelfish" option in its
> settings to turn JavaScript on/off.

I don't get this point at all. If you want to know, google for it.

> - Distributors working to get KDE setups ready for schools,
> businesses, mobile devices etc. will all have to
> waste time patching software to take these names out and put something
> more descriptive and obvious in place.

Well great. I guess they adapt more stuff to their customers. If they think it should go upstream, they can find us and we can see if that fits.

> - While testing Mailody from trunk I noticed the 'Akonadi tray'
> utility which gets started in the system tray.
> The user interface for this tray doesn't mention anywhere what Akonadi
> actually is.  When Mailody starts
> up, I received a warning message about a problem locating Akonadi
> resources, again, without mentioning
> what an "Akonadi resource" is.

(Which is pretty strange because the akonadi tray is in kdepim/akonadi, where the resources are also located, so how can you have the tray but not the resources?)

This is a silly example because the distro's should make sure there are resources available. For all other users ( developers who compile from svn ) this message is fine.

> - In System Settings there are modules called "Nepomuk" and "Solid".
> Again, I worry that many users are not going
> to have a clue what these are.  For quite a while during the 4.0 cycle
> the sound setup in System Settings was called "Phonon".

It's all about branding. First we create a hype and then we are going to deny those words to be used in the interface?

>  What I propose
> is to create some simple guidelines

Obviously I will vote against it.

> I am not sure what you could use for Akonadi as its scope is very
> broad.  "Akonadi Calendaring/Mail/Organisation/Backup/Tea Making" is
> probably
> too long for a menu item ;)

Yeah, that's why it is called "Akonadi". 

But it is a cross-desktop implementation, so possible KDE guidelines don't apply anyway.

Best,

Toma