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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: About boxes
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       1999-04-22 16:03:02
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Waldo Bastian wrote:

> David Sweet wrote:
> >
> > Since "About boxes" have come up, here's my two cents.  I'd like to see About
> > boxes:
> >         1) tell what the application does.  This could be so helpful for new
> > users sitting down to a desktop with a bunch of applications.  Sometimes users
> > don't know enough about computing terms and history to know, for example, that
> > "kghostview" is used to view/preview files that were made to be sent to a
> > printer.
> >         2) have an active mailto: link (KURLLabel?) to send mail to
> > maintainers.  Besides being convenient, it seems almost unnatural to me theses
> > days to be presented with an email address and not be able to click on it (or
> > even cut and paste it!)  An active link to the home page would be nice, too.

On the mail-to think, I hope we can improve on the current situation.  Currently,
authors/maintainers put their personal e-mail address on the "mail to" links.  What
happens when someone uses that software in 2 years, or maybe in 5 years, and that
e-mail address is no longer valid (which is very likely the case; I mean in KDE's
short history look how often basic programs have changed maintainers)?

In short, the problem with links is they become dead quite easily, yet if you
hardcode them into an application there they are, they cannot be changed.

Perhaps a smarter approach is to use a stable e-mail address that will be around for
a while, such as "applications@kde.org", and have the About box URL provide a
subject line (the name of the application and a note to the user not to change the
subject line); then on the KDE side the mail server would filter the mail and
forward them to the *current* maintainer of the named application.

Perhaps at the start this sounds not so good to a developer, who is thinking, I want
to get my mail directly!  But, on the other hand, after you stop developing, do you
still want to be getting bug reports in 3 years?

Well, my $0.02 worth.

Regards,

Andreas Pour

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