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

[Mark]

On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 3:00 PM, David Jarvie <djarvie at kde.org> wrote:
> On Mon, July 25, 2011 12:32 pm, Mark wrote:
>> Hi Ben,
>>
>> Could you read and comment on my proposal:
>> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=131142514605051&w=2
>> I would like to implement this in the spec, KDE en Gnome, but i need
>> some pointers on where i should make such edits and to get it
>> approved.
>>
>> I think that is the most sane solution that doesn't require multiple
>> desktop files.
>>
>> If you agree on this, what do i need to do next?
>> Just some guesses..
>> - Propose the updated standard in the freedesktop mailing list (which
>> one?)
>> - Make patched for KDE (which component? where? file?)
>> - Make patches for gnome (which component? where? file?)
>
> This proposal is fine for technically literate users, and might provide a
> short term fix, but, as Friedrich has already pointed out, it is not good
> for a user who just uses whatever desktop happens to be installed on
> his/her system, and installs whichever applications seem suitable
> regardless of what desktop they come from. Such users won't necessarily
> know whether the application they are using is a KDE one or a Gnome one or
> something else. Faced with two alternative settings applications, say
> "System Settings" and "KDE System Settings"/"Gnome System Settings", that
> user would not realise the relevance of the Gnome/KDE System Settings, and
> would likely ignore it even if it happened to be the one needed for the
> application.
>
> The only long term solution for ordinary users is to have interoperability
> of settings between desktops, so that it won't matter which system
> settings application they use. Applications with more specialist needs,
> i.e. settings which aren't (yet) interoperable, would need to provide
> configuration of those settings from within the application.

I find it to be a long term solution to be honest..
However, the "best solution" should imho be a generic "System
settings" application.

Then another issue arrises.. If it's made in Qt the GTK/Gnome people
probably don't want to use it. If it's written in GTK then Qt/KDE
people probably don't want to use it.

So what we need is a generic setting thing that is DE independent and
doesn't use Qt or GTK (hmm, can dbus do something here?). Then a
abstraction above it to make a Qt interface for the Qt apps and a GTK
interface for the GTK apps. THEN on top of that a GUI can be made to
show ALL settings for KDE, Gnome and whatever DE hooked into it.

This is just some brainstorming in an email so it's probably quite
vague. Certainly something that should get some more though :)