Formal complaint concerning the use of the name "System Settings" by GNOME

Mark markg85 at gmail.com
Sat Jul 23 13:44:26 BST 2011


On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Dodji Seketeli <dodji at seketeli.org> wrote:
> Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi at gmail.com> a écrit:
>
>> On 2011-07-23 at 11:27, Dodji Seketeli wrote:
>>> Why?  Do you have an example that would show where Shaun's proposal
>>> falls short?
>>
>> it falls short in showing:
>>
>>   System Settings
>>   KDE System Settings
>>
>> under Gnome, and:
>>
>>   System Settings
>>   Gnome System Settings
>>
>> under KDE.
>
> Oh, I see.
>
>> the real solution is to make it unnecessary (or even conflicting) to
>> install the KDE system settings shell under a Gnome environment, and the
>> Gnome system settings under a KDE environment;
>
> That would be a more elegant situation, IMO.
>
>
>> these are configuring the system settings, and you can hardly have two
>> systems running at the same time on the same machine.
>
> Agreed.
>
>> applications should not be configured through the *system* settings;
>> and both system settings shell should configure the same services.
>
> This makes sense to me.
>
>>> You don't say why these would better address the issue "here and now" in
>>> comparison with what Shaun is proposing.
>>
>> there is no "here and now" — that would be a hack. I hardly think we
>> have to solve this *quickly*, so we should solve it correctly.
>
> My point was to have the options written down and have interested people
> explicitly say why a particular point is valid or not, rather than just
> bluntly dismissing someone's point as being a non-solution without
> providing rationale.
>
> As for the "here and now", I don't personally perceive this issue as
> urgent as I use GNOME only.  But I could imagine that some people do.

Just a small suggestion on how i think this should be "fixed" (since 2
desktop files for one app seems just ugly to me).
Perhaps it's better to extend the desktop file specification:
http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s05.html

And i would propose adding 2 entries:
NativeDE - This one holds the desktop environment name where the app
would be "native". So GNOME, KDE or whatever.
NameNonNative - This one holds the app name when it's shown in a
desktop environment that is not native. When not set fallback to
"Name"

So for example the "System Settings" app in KDE looks somewhat like
this in a .desktop file:

Name=System Settings
NativeDE=KDE
NameNonNative=KDE System Settings

The same applies for gnome system settings and also for the system
monitor (that also has the naming issue)
Isn't this a good solution?

Regards,
Mark



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