[Kde-games-devel] Generic names

[Ian Wadham]

On Monday 12 April 2010 1:34:00 am Parker Coates wrote:
> 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:
> >>> 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.
> >>>
I put that into GenericName in KGoldrunner.desktop in May 2008, responding
to a request from Aaron Seigo on the thread quoted below.  It seemed to me
that a description was required, even if it had the strange key "GenericName".

> >>> 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:
> >>
I am a firm believer that a menu entry should contain an application name and
a description that gives you some clue as to what the application does.

That the description has been filed under GenericName seems weird to me.
The genericity should be supplied by the menu's hierarchy, e.g. Games->Arcade.
Incidentally, it would be nice if the hierarchical items could sometimes 
include some explanation.  What is an arcade game anyway?

Maybe GenericName is used because Scripty only looks for GenericName or
that menu code only looks for that key.  Either way, it's a bug IMHO, maybe
two bugs.

> >>  - The Kickoff style menu uses Name in bold above GenericName is a
> >> smaller font, shown only on hover.
> >>
I don't know why hover is used at all.  Why not show both items all the time?
They have different styles.  And why not show them side by side, thus saving
screen space and eyeball time?

> >>  - The tradtional style menu uses Generic-Name (Name).
> >>
I get (in SuSE 11.2) GenericName and then Name only on hover and in
faint type.  If someone has heard of KBlocks and is looking for it, they
will not find it at first glance.

> 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.
> 
So menus and Scripty should look for Description (or whatever the desktop
file standard tag key for descriptions is). Then it will be clear what we have
to write in the desktop file and what translators have to translate - and it
will be easy.  No more confusion over this GenericName stuff.

But heh, heh.  It looks as if there *is* no key for Description in the
freedesktop.org standard quoted by Parker ...  So it looks as though
the GenericName kludge is the only way to shoehorn one in ...

> > Some cleanup to the generic names could help anyway, though, I'll look
> > into those too.
> 
> I agree. Go for it. :)
> 
Thanks Luciano and Parker.

All the best, Ian W.