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

[Friedrich W. H. Kossebau]

Dimanche, le 24 juillet 2011, à 23:07, Ben Cooksley a écrit:
> Dropping GNOME out of this, as it seems quite clear they aren't
> interested in co-operating at all. Which is fairly typical for them,
> they're insular and only care for themselves.

This is quite insulting, I do not think many share your broad accusations, I 
least I hope not many do.

Sorry, Ben, but someone who names his program with that general term "System 
settings" and expects it to have this name in all of the shells/workspaces 
(Gnome Shell, Unity, XFCE, Enlightenment, $WINDOWMANAGER, even in Windows and 
OS X?), while it only basically controls settings of the KDE runtime 
env/platform, is at least also one who is insular and only cares for himself 
(or his workspace), no? Think about it. At least to me System = 
Shell/Workspace or OS/Computer even.

And with my user hat on I would think this "Linux" is utterly shitty if I have 
to use different setting programs for all the existing toolkits out there, to 
do the same settings again and again.
I am only looking out to also see Tcl Settings, EFL Settings, Gnustep 
Settings. Perhaps also some Motif Settings, to be old-school. Perfect! Not.

If Joe user uses Unity and wants to use that hex editor Okteta someone 
recommended to him, would/should he need to know about "KDE" and that Okteta 
is implemented based on another toolkit than most of the default programs?
I say No, and guess most users don't care as well (unless "toolkit racists"). 
And thus he should also not need to know he has to use that other "System 
Settings" then the general system settings.

> In any case, we need a short term solution to this. Basically, we are
> going to have to provide a different name under GNOME, because
> otherwise  GNOME users will complain to distros, who will patch GNOME
> to ignore System Settings (I refuse to acknowledge their app).

Well, the two desktop file solution might work, no? Name it "KDE System 
Settings" or similar for non-Plasma envs in one file, and "System Settings" 
for Plasma envs in the original one. Make that other file a patch for 4.7.1.
Or did I miss something?

> A long term solution

... is to continue all the work that has been done to share as many settings 
as possible, and to support running programs in not-the-native environments, 
ideally without the need for a separate settings program for the toolkit in 
use, using some sane defaults there if needed.
A big thanks for everyone who has done before or/and keeps pushing on this, 
like Aurélien with the "kdeui/kernel: Use platform palette and fonts" commit 
only last friday.

And otherwise I completely agree with Cornelius. 

Cheers
Friedrich
-- 
Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin - Registered already? - www.desktopsummit.org