[Kde-games-devel] Generic names

[Parker Coates]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 11:08, Luciano Montanaro wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Parker Coates
> <parker.coates at kdemail.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 09:43, Luciano Montanaro wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> I've noticed today that KGoldrunner did not show up in the menu as
>>> KGoldrunner, but as the Italian translation of
>>> "Hunt Gold, Dodge Enemies and Solve Puzzles".
>>> I thought that maybe something went wrong with the translation, so I
>>> checked out.
>>>
>>> It turns out that we have now a "GenericName" for games in addition to
>>> the Name in desktop files, and that this is preferred to the Name when
>>> present.
>>
>> This very discussion came up almost exactly two years ago. See
>> http://kde.markmail.org/thread/m2ji5ucrsehff7yb . Generic names have
>> been around for quite a while and which of the two names is preferred
>> depends on application launcher used and its configuration. Here is
>> what I see, using the default configurations in SC4.4.2:
>>
>>  - The Kickoff style menu uses Name in bold above GenericName is a
>> smaller font, shown only on hover.
>>
>>  - The tradtional style menu uses Generic-Name (Name).
>>
>>  - Lancelot uses Name in bold above GenericName is a smaller font.
>>
>> So the degree of the problem problem depends on the particular
>> launcher being used. If the GenericName is shown like a subtitle, then
>> many of our existing choices make sense, but if it's shown as the main
>> name then most of them do not.
>
> I probably made a mistake, I thought that the "comment" field would be used for
> the description, but it uses the generic name for that instead.

According to the spec, the comment field is used for tooltips. I'm not
sure if anyone actually supports that feature, though.
http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s05.html

> I use the "old style" menu (the one that resembles the KDE 3 menu),
> and I selected the
> "names only" options.
> It turns out the "name only" and "description only" actions are
> inverted. Anybody can confirm this?
> If this is the case, I should notify the bug to the plasma people.

Confirmed in SC4.4.2. File away!

You might also want to complain about the naming of those options.
Since the entries in the desktop file are supposed to be "application
name" and "generic name", labelling them "Name" and "Description" in
the UI sort of increases the confusion. Coming up with a description
of Killbots is easy. Coming up with a generic name for it isn't.

> Some cleanup to the generic names could help anyway, though, I'll look
> into those too.

I agree. Go for it. :)

Parker