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

[David Jarvie]

On Mon, July 25, 2011 8:08 pm, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> David Jarvie wrote:
>> On Mon, July 25, 2011 12:50 pm, Ambroz Bizjak wrote:
>>> Hi Mark,
>>> have you seen my proposed improvement on your suggestion?
>>>
>>> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=131149560119520&w=2
>>>
>>> I suggest that you consider it, because it would avoid having to
>>> update the Freedesktop specification and any DE that doesn't name its
>>> programs differently in other DEs (e.g. Xfce).
>>
>> This proposal has the same drawbacks as Mark's - it is aimed at
>> knowledgeable users, not the ordinary user who may not be aware of which
>> desktop a particular application is from. See
>> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=131159889604990&w=2.
>
> So what is *your* proposed solution?
>
> As you say, the long term solution is to have setting interoperability.
> The
> key words there are "long term". We can't do that *now*, before the new
> KDE
> release and before the new GNOME release. We need a solution *now* to
> avoid
> having two entries with the exact same name in the application list.
>
> Mark and Ambroz's solutions have the advantage of not requiring months of
> collaboration and programming, which would be needed for setting
> interoperability.

I don't object to Mark's proposal as a short term solution - it's better
than having two identically named applications. I'm just concerned that it
isn't ideal from the ordinary user's perspective, and that it should be
recognised as being an interim fix.

The longer term aim should of course be to share as many as possible of
the settings between desktops and therefore make them accessible from both
Gnome and KDE System Settings applications. KCMs should be categorised
according to whether or not they contain settings which are not shared
between desktops, and applications using unshared settings should as a
matter of policy be expected to provide direct access to the relevant
KCMs, thus avoiding the need for the user to find and run the 'other'
System Settings.

-- 
David Jarvie.
KDE developer.
KAlarm author - http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm