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

[Ben Cooksley]

On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Giovanni Campagna
<scampa.giovanni at gmail.com> wrote:
> Il giorno dom, 24/07/2011 alle 21.00 +1200, Ben Cooksley ha scritto:
>> 2011/7/24 Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi at gmail.com>:
>> > hi;
>> >
>> > 2011/7/24 Aurélien Gâteau <agateau at kde.org>:
>> >> Most distributions split KDE packages so if you get a pre-installed
>> >> computer with Gnome and a few KDE applications installed, KDE System
>> >> Settings would not be installed.
>> >>
>> >> You are only likely to get both System Settings pre-installed if your
>> >> computer was shipped with both KDE and Gnome desktops. In this
>> >> situation, I assume you would be provided with some explanation as to
>> >> what KDE and Gnome are.
>> >
>> > installing both Gnome and KDE is not equivalent to running both at the
>> > same time.
>> >
>> > if you managed to get yourself into the scenario where KDE and Gnome
>> > have been installed at the same time then the KDE system settings
>> > shell should be marked as NotShowIn=Gnome, and the Gnome one should be
>> > NotShowIn=KDE. currently, gnome-control-center uses:
>> >
>> >  OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;
>> >
>> > so a menu rendered under KDE won't show it. now, googling a bit I found this:
>> >
>> >  https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/102038/
>> >
>> > which is, I guess, what really prompted this thread. so, if the KDE
>> > system settings shell appears alongside any other system settings
>> > shell it means that the users are not running KDE, but are running any
>> > other XDG-recognised desktop.
>> >
>> >>> 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.
>> >>
>> >> Releases are conflicting right *now*, so yes, I think there is a need to
>> >> solve it quickly, even if the first fix is a short-term one.
>> >
>> > the short-term fix is to make the KDE system settings OnlyShowIn=KDE,
>> > so that users running KDE will not have any issue, and every other
>> > desktop will correctly not show the KDE system settings shell.
>>
>> Wrong. Emmanuele, read my initial email to see why that is not an
>> acceptable solution under any circumstances.
>> It has to be shown in some form, regardless of the name, under all
>> desktop environments.
>
> Again, no. There is nothing you want to configure, running under GNOME,
> in KDE system settings. Qt apps, running under GNOME, should use Gtk+
> style (already done by Qt), GNOME preferred apps and mime-type
> associations (already done by shared-mime-info), GNOME networking
> preferences (already done by NetworkManager and libproxy), GNOME fonts
> (already done by fontconfig). Everything else (desktop effects, hardware
> settings, date and time, users...) should not be configurable by KDE
> system settings, and will likely conflict if changed.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.
Phonon backend cannot be configured without System Settings.
Standard keyboard shortcuts for KDE applications cannot be configured
without System Settings.
We don't share Date/Time/Localisation/etc - you need System Settings for that.
Theme - we both have our own stores of it - you need System Settings
again (in case you don't believe me, read ~/.gtk2rc)
KDE Wallet has some of it's configuration stored in System Settings
too - and it is used by KDE applications even outside KDE for secure
password storage.

Regards,
Ben Cooksley