GNOME menu ugliness - Name/GenericName

[Michael Schwendt]

What is the "correct usage" of Name/GenericName in Fedora Land?

[...]

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Desktop_files

| Installed .desktop files MUST follow the desktop-entry-spec , paying
| particular attention to validating correct usage of Name, GenericName,
| [...] entries.

Raises the question: What is "correct usage" of those entries?

http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s05.html

| Name	: Specific name of the application,
| for example "Mozilla". (REQUIRED)

| GenericName	: Generic name of the application,
| for example "Web Browser". (OPTIONAL)

Raises the questions: Why don't packages adhere to this standard?

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=GenericName&go=Go

Tells me that this has been discussed several times in early 2007.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue90#What_Should_X-Chat_Be_Called_In_T...
(May 2007)
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-May/msg02153.html

| Kevin also wondered why GNOME didn't support GenericNames in .desktop
| yet, which Matthias answered by saying no one had got around to it yet.

Is this still the case? - Seems so. GNOME here only shows the Name= entries.
How does KDE handle this?

Why do we have a policy on "correct usage" of Name/GenericName that would
make the menus look ugly. It's not just the mix of Name/GenericName in there,
it confuses users, who are not familiar with application names. I would
like to violate the guidelines and put GenericName as Name to escape from
this.

To repeat the question from the beginning:
What is the "correct usage" of Name/GenericName in Fedora Land?

[Till Maas]

On Fri December 19 2008, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> Is this still the case? - Seems so. GNOME here only shows the Name=
> entries. How does KDE handle this?

KDE 4 shows the GenericName in big letters and when the mouse pointer is above 
one entry, the Name is also shown in smaller letters below the GenericName. 
Imho it is very convinient and not ugly.
> Why do we have a policy on "correct usage" of Name/GenericName that would
> make the menus look ugly. It's not just the mix of Name/GenericName in

A screenshot may help to understand, how ugly it looks in Gnome. Here is a 
Screenshot from KDE:

http://till.fedorapeople.org/tmp/KDE-GenericName.png

Regards,
Till

[Kevin Kofler]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> Is this still the case? - Seems so. GNOME here only shows the Name=
> entries. How does KDE handle this?

It shows both, in different styles depending on whether you use Kickoff or
the classic menu. (Kickoff defaults to showing mainly the GenericName and
the Name on mouseover, classic defaults to showing both next to each other.
Of course if there's only Name, only Name will be displayed (which means
that if you fill in the generic name as "Name", the real name will be
missing).)
> Why do we have a policy on "correct usage" of Name/GenericName that would
> make the menus look ugly.

Because the "incorrect" usage (which is sadly still used in quite a few
GNOME apps) makes the KDE menus look ugly. Not all the world uses GNOME.
> It's not just the mix of Name/GenericName in there, it confuses users, who
> are not familiar with application names.

Filling in only a generic name confuses the users who _are_ familiar with
application names. The proper solution is to fix GNOME to do something
useful with GenericName.
> I would like to violate the guidelines and put GenericName as Name to
> escape from this.

Please don't. You'll break things for KDE users if you do (and yes, we're
still fighting to get the remaining offenders fixed - please don't add to
the problem).

Kevin Kofler

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:23:23 +0100, Kevin wrote:
> (and yes, we're
> still fighting to get the remaining offenders fixed - please don't add to
> the problem).

This is just dull. :(

The pop-up help in GNOME panel is affected, too, because it prints the
"Comment" entry under the "Name" entry:

---------------------
Firefox Web Browser
Browse the Web
---------------------

---------------------
Emacs Text Editor
Edit text
---------------------

---------------------
DDD Debugger
Data Display Debugger
---------------------

to give a few examples.

[Muayyad AlSadi]

> KDE 4 shows the GenericName in big letters and when the mouse pointer is above

I thought that is the comment

[Kevin Kofler]

Muayyad AlSadi wrote:
> I thought that is the comment

No, it's not, KDE ignores the comment entirely (which is also bad, IMHO it
should show it as a tooltip like GNOME does).

Kevin Kofler

[Peter Robinson]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Michael Schwendt  wrote:
> What is the "correct usage" of Name/GenericName in Fedora Land?

There was a discussion about this September last year, not sure what
the resolution is though.

Peter