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

[Ambroz Bizjak]

Hi Thomas,

Additionally, I make the following points on your proposed solution:

My solution can do everything that the solution you are proposing (if
that is a solution at all). So if anything, it is techically on the
same level.

Your solution (as far as I get it) assumes a specific interpretation
of the Name and GenericName fields. It's just that some DEs (and
distributions)
use the Name field for the primary name in the menu, while some use
the Name field. Personally, I prefer the Name option where the menu
shows the actual name
of the application. This is also the case in other desktops, for
instance Windows. Any disambiguation you attempt to do only on the
basis of the
Name and GenericName will behave differently, depending on what menu
representation is in use (and there is *no* standard - some DEs use
one, some the other,
most allow you to switch, and even some distros change the default),
and you won't have full control over the naming of the menu entry -
which you
do have with my solution (except for the Name-vs-GenericName thing),
and which is necessary for proper disambiguation of clashes.

Regards,
Ambroz

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 9:10 PM, Thomas Lübking
<thomas.luebking at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ambroz, (and everybody else of course)
>
> Am Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:39:27 +0200
> schrieb Ambroz Bizjak <ambrop7 at gmail.com>:
>
>> Yes, that is what this extension would allow. It's a powerful tool,
>> and any powerful tool can be abused.
> If an application has a different name under different DEs, that's not
> "abuse" but error by design (sorry, i don't mean to be offensive)
> Leaving aside systemsettings, what if i tell somebody to run marble
> ("it's like google-earth!") but he then starts some solitaire game
> (because there is eg. a solitaire game like this on "OtherDE" and
> marble is named "KDE's google-earth clone" ;-) he'll be pissed and i'll
> be lost.
>
>> This doesn't solve the original problem.
> Yes it does. They will certainly not share the same binary name or
> we've a _real_ problem. (Or not, since there will be only one target
> for the application link anyway ;-)
>
> It would also be possible to choose "System Settings" as generic name
> and "KDE Settings" as non generic one. The latter would only be
> presented for clarification (if the runner wanted)
>
>> It is also harder to implement, and the behavior is non-obvious.
> a) "i don't think so"
> b) that's not an excuse.
>
>> My proposal is not tied to English in any way.
> No, but it is tied to the ppl, knowing about an and resolving an actual
> clash which i doubt translators can be expected to be.
>> The individual Specific-DE-
> I wasn't restricting my concerns to the "we already know about an
> existing clash in LANG=C".
> The very same issue can _easily_ arise onlny in a particular
> translation.
>
> To repeat the example, if translator (a) translates the KDE .desktop
> file, translator (b) the gnome one and they don't coordinate, they
> might pick the very same translation for "control center" and "system
> settings" (unless as mentioned there's a trademark in the string what
> renders the entire approach useless since that could be added
> automatically anyway)
> This might happen even though there are similar strings in German
> (surprise, since english is just degene... strike that ;-) because as
> mentioned the translators might have other references in mind.
> In other languages there might not even be any variants of this item.
>
> -> If clashes are (apparently) an existing problem, they need to be
> avoided at the end of the chain where they can be spotted for sure and
> not on the start where we just hope we (and everybody else!) did
> everything ok.
>
> Cheers,
> Thomas
>