Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28 [LWN.net]

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 10:05 UTC (Thu) by beranger (guest, #39167)
In reply to: Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28 by ovitters
Parent article: Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

"Toterm": I can't edit a comment, once posted. This is the software frameweork of LWN.net.

About the name in the menus: this is one more proof that GNOME is treating its users for idiots. Heck, are they Windows users? Are they Mac users? I suppose MS-DOS users were the smartest of all :-)

But... go find a Windows XP box, and look for the Accessories menu. You'll find there "Notepad", not "Text Editor". Uh? (Of course, Paint is pbrush.exe and WordPad is write.exe, but this is legacy.)

OTOH, are they ashamed of the name Totem? Is the user really supposed not to know the real name of the application?

The full name is "Totem Movie Player", see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Totem_...

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Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 10:09 UTC (Thu) by beranger (guest, #39167) [Link] (4 responses)

BTW, is the official name still "Totem Movie Player", or has it changed for "Totem Media Player"?! Is it still looking like this?

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 10:38 UTC (Thu) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (3 responses)

2.28.0-2 in Debian just says "Movie Player" in the menu bar, but "Totem Movie Player" in the About box. No use of Media Player, so I can definitely understand the original poster's frustration.

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 11:15 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (2 responses)

I already explained it is often called Media Player, even in the previous release notes.

I can see that it is wrong. However, it is just used as an excuse to talk about Mono

Showing what some other OS does, whatever.

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 11:53 UTC (Thu) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link] (1 responses)

Do you happen to know where the right place is to report bugs in the release
notes? If the same error occurs in 2.26 and 2.30, it suggests that the error
isn't being reported in the right place. I can't see an appropriate
"product" on bugzilla.gnome.org.

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 12:13 UTC (Thu) by beranger (guest, #39167) [Link]

They don't even seem to have a 'product manager':
2.28: These release notes were compiled by Paul Cutler
2.26: These release notes were compiled by Davyd Madeley

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 14:23 UTC (Thu) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (4 responses)

What's stupid about GNOME is not that programs in menus are called by names like Movie Player. What is stupid is having a name like Totem, which offers no way to know the function of the program by its name.

Let's take another clever name: Baobab. This is a tree that grows a long, smooth trunk with branches at very high level from ground. If it kinda looks like a metaphor for a filesystem tree, is it then a good name for a Disk Usage Analyzer? I couldn't disagree more.

If only every application had simple, boring name that bore direct resemblance to its function, like, say, gnome-media-player or gnome-disk-usage-analyzer, GNOME would be that much less annoying.

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 14:26 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Of course this is not just a GNOME problem. KDE 4's names are often so bizarre I can't remember which is which (although most of the really weird ones like nepomuk are infrastructural components that users don't need to know about, I hope).

And of course this is not a recent problem. Software has been given ridiculous names for longer than I've been alive...

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 14:36 UTC (Thu) by xanni (subscriber, #361) [Link] (1 responses)

The problem with generic names is the high chance of a collision. Unusual names are hopefully less likely to be already in use and may also be more memorable - and more likely to match search results usefully!

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 16:36 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

For a couple of months I was using the KDE menu which didn't show the actual program name for each entry, just the description (eg. 'Web Browser', 'Music Player'). I think they've fixed that now, but it was amazing how much harder that made it to use - trying to open a program might take several seconds, where previously I could let my subconscious do it in a fraction of the time. It's particularly bad when you have two programs which do 'the same thing', in this simplified view of the world.

I think generic names might make the system easier to use for the very first time, but why optimise a user-interface for that state, if it makes it harder for ever more? What's wrong with having entries for 'Totem media player', *and* 'Amarok media player'?

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 15:16 UTC (Thu) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link]

<sarcasm>And Amarok or kicker are just completely obvious names for media
players and docks respectively</sarcasm>

If you didn't write the software you have 0 say in what it is called. Open
source is (generally speaking) a meritocracy. This is not gnome, this is the
open source world in general. If you want gnome-disk-usage-analyzer, quit
whining and write it yourself. Then make it better than baobab (granted this
is an odd name) and get it in gnome proper. Then everyone wins except the
trolls. As previously mentioned, descriptions such as, "Movie Player", or
"Totem Movie Player" _are_ representative of the function of the application.

Sometimes it is sad that LWN doesn't have comment moderation akin to digg.

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 21:06 UTC (Thu) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link] (1 responses)

GNOME is not treating users as stupid, it just focus on different kinds of users than some other environments. If you like software that exposes its guts, and expects you to know about its internals, and specific names, that is OK, my mom doesn't really care, she just wants to watch videos. Me as well, for what is worth.

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 23:10 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Ditto for me.

Gnome, to me, is about taking something that is complex and trying to make it
easy and approachable as possible. Its not expecting the users to understand
what is going on. Its not about providing a bazillion different options that
users are presented with at every turn.

So I only have to care about the things that I care about. So what if I have
to occasionally dig down to gconf to get a specific tweak I want? Its not a
serious hardship and there is no reason why every other user in the world is
forced to make a choice based on my choice or even know if it exists.