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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: K this and K that
From:       Torgeir Strand Henriksen <torgshen () stud ! iet ! hist ! no>
Date:       2003-05-23 14:01:50
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fre, 23.05.2003 kl. 13.16 skrev Roland Seuhs: 
> Actually it avoids confusion.

What about Kaffe, Kakasi, Kali, and KInput? They all sound like KDE
applications, but are not.

> (Seriously, if you are offended by "K"-names, I think you will be just as offended \
> by phantasy-names)

"Offended" is much too strong a word, it is merely annoyance. I'm not
annoyed by "fantasy" names like Evolution, but I see your point about
them not being very descriptive.

> 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.

Winternet Explorer? WinOutlook Express? WinOffice? WinSolitaire? I could
go on, but you know what I mean. :) As for Apple, they haven't extended
the "i" naming convention to everything (Safari, Mail, Finder). Gnome
doesn't seem to follow a "g" naming convention that hard either
(Gnumeric and Galeon come to mind, the later seemingly being some
creative spelling even if the G is right), most of the application names
are "fantasy" ones (Evolution, Anjuta, Nautilus, Pan) or descriptive
ones (Calculator, Terminal).

> That is exactly the point. KWord is releated to Winword - it has the same function.

First, Microsoft's word processor is called Word, not Winword (even
though the executable might still be called that, which was done to
avoid conflict with the DOS version of Word unless I'm mistaken). And
even if they are both word processors, I don't think it benefits a
non-technical user to believe KWord IS Word.

KDE's gear menu contains names like "KWord (Word Processing)" and "KMail
(Mail Client)", so perhaps one simple possibility would be an option in
the control center that lets the user choose to only display the
(slightly modified) descriptive strings, like "Word processor", "Mail
client", and so on. The title bar would still be an issue, but maybe
this too could be changed in a similar manner? I'm not familiar enough
with KDE programming to know how feasible this would be.

If it is feasible, it would hopefully address both potential confusion
among newbies, and developers' need to feel part of the KDE community,
as mentioned by Alexander Kellett. But it's just my two cents.
-- 
Torgeir Strand Henriksen <torgshen@stud.iet.hist.no>

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