[Kde-games-devel] generic names in .desktop files

[Matt Williams]

On Tuesday 15 April 2008 18:44:51 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> hi games people!
>
> the topic of app menus came up at one point at Tokamak (surprise!) and one
> of the identified pain points was the games menu. [ade] has also blogged
> about this issue recently.
>
> what it comes down to, essentially, is that the generic names for many of
> our games are rather unhelpful to the user. having N "Boardgame" entries
> show up isn't overly great.
>
> a suggestion that came up was that many games simply don't *have* generic
> names: killbots is .. well .. killbots. and that's that.
>
> some do, however: kpat is a Sollitaire Card Game.
>
> what do you folks think?
>
> i'd love to get this cleaned up for 4.1 a bit if we can.

I think description names are useful. Here's the list in kdegames at present 
with "<Name>: <GenericName>" (note, <name> isn't always the binary name):


Ones that are Fine IMO:

Bovo: Five-in-a-row Board Game
KAtomic: Sokoban-like Logic Game
KBattleship: Battleship Game
KDiamond: Three-in-a-row game
KFourInLine: Four-in-a-row Board Game
Kiriki: Yahtzee-like Dice Game
KMahjongg: Mahjongg Solitaire
KMines: Minesweeper-like Game
KNetWalk: Network Construction Game
Kolf: Miniature Golf
kollision: A simple ball dodging game
KPatience: Patience Card Game
KReversi: Reversi Board Game
Shisen-Sho: Shisen-Sho Mahjongg-like Tile Game
KSquares: Connect the dots to create squares
KTuberling: Picture Game for Children

Ones that might need improving:

KBounce: Ball Bouncing Game
KGoldrunner: Action & Puzzle Solving Game
Konquest: Galactic Strategy Game
KSpaceDuel: Space Arcade Game
KBlackBox: Blackbox Logic Game

Bad ones:

KJumpingCube: Tactical Game
Kolor Lines: Tactical Game
SameGame: Board Game
ksudoku: Sudoku Game
Kubrick: <none>
KSkat: Card Game


So what do people think about these?

Also note that ksudoku and kollision have lower case 'Name's. Should these be 
upper-cased like the rest? What's the rule for this?

One or two of the 'Name's are quite generic themselves, e.g. Shisen-Sho. 
Perhaps this should be kept called "KShisen" (with the GenericName 
as "Shisen-Sho Mahjongg-like Tile Game") to give it some branding? We need to 
think about the case when gnome-games is installed alongside kdegames. This 
is compounded by displaying the GenericName in the menu (see below).

I guess the real question to be asking is whether GenericName should be the 
actual generic name (i.e. KPat shold be "Patience" and Kiriki should 
be "Yahtzee") or should it be more descriptive (i.e. "(A) patience card game" 
and "(A) Yahtzee-like Dice Game" or even "Connect the dots to create squares" 
for KSquares)?

However, I think the main reason this is a problem is because Kickoff shows 
the GenericName be default and only show the real Name on hover. For games 
(where there can be a lot of overlap within genres) this is completely the 
wrong way to go about it.

Regards,
Matt Williams
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