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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: Why the K-Menu sucks
From:       Thomas Diehl <thd () kde ! org>
Date:       2000-10-29 12:32:16
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On Sonntag, 29. Oktober 2000 11:59, Matthias Elter wrote:

> Thats why the Windows Start menu sucks, too. Ask your mother what she
> will be looking for when she wants to start a mail client from the
> menu. And she wont reply "KMail".

Sure. But about 99.9% of the users refer to the program as "KMail". It 
has become kind of a "brand name" like WordPerfect or Konqueror. 
Problem is that many programs don't have descriptive names which are 
clear and catchy enough to work as such "brand names" (kwuftpd, kab 
...) and that outside the English speaking world even the names that 
sound very descriptive to us may not be that clear.

We had a long discussion about the problem in the German translation 
team because I translated the entry "Organizer" with the German 
equivalent ("Terminplaner") instead of using "KOrganizer" which 
everybody said was the "real name" of the program. We asked the 
developer -- and he also voted for "KOrganizer" and for changing the 
original entry in the K-Menu.

> Why? KMail is our standard mail client, so "Mail Client" is just
> perfect.

Well, people who are looking for "KMail" will certainly not call this 
perfect. Also naming the program like this apparently sounds to many 
people like "the one and only program which deserves the name mail 
client". In the quoted discussion people called this naming scheme 
"presumptuous" ("anmassend").

On the whole, I also think we should have something that provides both 
in most cases, the program name and a description. In the German 
translation we are playing around with a naming scheme like "KWrite: 
Advanced Editor". Not perfect, either, but kind of a compromise 
everybody could live with.

Regards,

Thomas


-- 
KDE translation: http://i18n.kde.org
Deutsche KDE-Uebersetzung: http://i18n.kde.org/teams/de

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