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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: About boxes
From:       Mario Weilguni <mweilguni () sime ! com>
Date:       1999-04-22 15:29:11
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Am Thu, 22 Apr 1999 schrieb Andreas Pour:
>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e-mail address is no longer valid (which is very likely the case; I mean in KDE's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?

Ok, but why not simple use an alias? 
E.g. kppp-maintainer@kde.org
Only one line in /etc/alias. No need to fiddle around with the subject line.

Ciao,
	Mario

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