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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: K this and K that
From:       Roland Seuhs <roland.seuhs () hasos ! com>
Date:       2003-05-23 11:16:51
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Am Freitag, 23. Mai 2003 02:09 schrieb Torgeir Strand Henriksen:
> I'm wondering, do most KDE application names really need to start with
> the letter K? To me, this is the most annoying aspect of an otherwise
> well-working desktop environment. While including the letter K can make
> it easy to spot a KDE application, is this feature all that useful? And
> doesn't it lead to confusion among newbies when non-KDE applications
> have names starting with K anyway?

Actually it avoids confusion.

> In my humble opinion, names like Konqueror and Kontour look like an
> exercise in bad spelling. Don't misunderstand me, the names themselves
> are completely okay, but why not spell them with the C they are supposed
> to be spelt with? Currently, this K naming convention isn't even
> maintained consistently, for example KControl and KCalc instead of
> Kontrol and Kalc (or Kalk?).
> 
> Most names don't start with a K-sound at all, but get a K thrown in
> anyway. Why KNode instead of Node?

Using a naming convention allows something that is otherwise very hard to achieve - \
to use a description in the name.

Everybody knows what KMail, KCalc and KSpread does by just reading the name. But \
nobody will know what "Evolution" does by just reading the name. So the name alone \
gives away some information: That the app is integrated in KDE and often also what it \
does. This is a good thing for everybody without any serious drawbacks, IMO. \
(Seriously, if you are offended by "K"-names, I think you will be just as offended by \
phantasy-names)

In the Windows-world a similar thing is done with the "Win" prefix, on Macs they \
start to use the "i" prefix and on classical Unix, graphical apps are often prefixed \
with "x". GNOME uses "g" which was a mistake IMO because very many non-graphical \
GNU-apps already use it.

> Based on
> my own experience, non-technical people tend to think KWord is somehow
> related to Microsoft Word, and get confused and annoyed when it doesn't
> look and behave the same way (especially with relation to file formats).
> Considering how much time is being spent writing these good and useful
> applications, wouldn't it be worth giving it a unique name?

That is exactly the point. KWord is releated to Winword - it has the same function.
If you need a substitute for Winword on KDE, KWord is the application to use. - So if \
uses started kword to operate on MS Word files, they did the right thing (or is there \
any other KDE application that tries to understand MS Word files? I don't think so.), \
so the name was perfect. I agree that kword's Winword filters leave a lot of room for \
improvement, but that's hardly the fault of the application name. KWord is still the \
only (and therefore best) way to manipulate MS Word files, so yes, MS Word users \
should be encouraged to use kword.

Roland

-- 
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.

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