[Bug 170949] New: About box text doesn't give any useful information.

[Tim Hutt]

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170949

           Summary: About box text doesn't give any useful information.
           Product: kde
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Ubuntu Packages
        OS/Version: unspecified
            Status: NEW
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: unassigned-bugs at kde.org
        ReportedBy: tdhutt at gmail.com


Version:            (using KDE 4.1.1)
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

Greetings KDE people. A long-standing peeve of mine is the text in about boxes.
Usually when I (and I assume at least some other people) are exploring the new
random apps linux tends to install, if I don't know what an app *does* I check
Help->About.

This is usually disappointing. Usually they say something like. "KFobulator,
written by John Smith 2002". To give a concrete example KCron just says "KDE
Task Scheduler". That's it! A new user who had never heard of cron may find
this somewhat confusing. I'd certainly appreciate a bit more verbosity and it
would come with no disadvantage (apart from maybe a *slight* increase in
workload for translators). Another example, KHexEdit: "KDE Hex Editor"! Really?
What is one of these hex editors I hear you cry.

Anyway, I propose that someone (me?) goes through all the KDE apps and write a
nice new user friendly bit about what each app actually *does*. I've made a
start, perhaps this could be a techbase project...:


KDE

Current text:

The K Desktop Environment is written and maintained by the KDE Team, a
world-wide network of software engineers committed to Free Software
development.

No single group, company or organisation controls the KDE source code. Everyone
is welcome to contribute to KDE.

Visit http://www.kde.org for more information on the KDE project. 

Proposed text:

The K Desktop Environment (KDE) is a large collection of applications and
frameworks. It can run on a variety of operating systems including Linux and
Microsoft Windows. Everything from the 'panel' (task bar) to KPatience (a
solitaire card game) is a part of KDE. Applications that are not part of KDE
can easily be run in the KDE environment however they may have a different look
and feel to the consistant style of KDE. 

KDE is written and maintained by a world-wide network of software engineers
committed to Free Software development. No single group, company or
organisation controls the KDE source code. Everyone is welcome to contribute to
KDE.

Visit http://www.kde.org/ for more information on the KDE project. The second
best desktop environment - GNOME can be found at http://www.gnome.org/ !

Kate

Kate is an advanced text editor for KDE. It is intended for editing raw text,
rather than word processing so it does not support formatting text. Instead it
has a number of features that aid programming and advanced text manipulation
such as syntax highlighting, automatic indentation and regex search and
replace.

KDevelop

KDevelop is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for KDE. It collects
all the tools needed for development of a computer program in one place. The
main features are a text editor for writing the program, shortcuts to compile
the program and an integrated debugger. It also features integrated version
control, a GUI designer and API documentation.

KWrite

KWrite is a lightweight text editor, similar to Kate - the other KDE text
editor. It is designed for quick editing of notes, configuration files and the
like. It is not recommended for programming or word processing.

Konsole

Konsole is an X terminal emulator for KDE. It allows you to access the command
line (or 'console') and run commands. It is similar to the DOS prompt on
Windows (tm) but more usable and powerful. Konsole supports colour schemes and
multiple tabs.

KMag

KMag is a screen magnifier. It provides a magnified view of the area of the
screen around the mouse cursor. This is useful for people with poor vision or
occasionally when you want to use your computer from across the room.

KCalc

KCalc is the KDE calculator. It can be used to perform basic arithmatic and
also calculations with a number of simple mathematical functions.

Okular

Okular is a document viewer for KDE. It's primary purpose is for viewing and
printing PDFs, though many other formats are supported such as DejaVu, DVI,
CHM, etc.

KCharSelect

KCharSelect shows the 'character map' for a given font. This is a list of
characters (glyphs) that are contained in the font. It allows you to select and
copy special symbols that cannot be typed on a keyboard. Note that if a font
does not contain a symbol, the system will try to use other fonts to provide it
so the symbols shown may not be from the selected font. Also note that if you
are sending esoteric charactes over the internet, the recepient must have the
relavent font installed in order to view the characters.

KRename

Amazingly has a decent about box!

KFileReplace

KFileReplace allows you to do a 'search and replace' in many files at once. It
supports advanced features such as regular expressions, creation of backup
files and using the output from external commands.

KLinkStatus

KLinkStatus is a web link checker for KDE. It can crawl a website and check
that all the hyperlinks point to an existing document.


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