Re: Proposal: Too similar application names

[Vitezslav Humpa]

Forwarded from test list. 
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "John Dulaney" <j_dulaney(a)live.com&gt; 
To: "Fedora QA" <test(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt; 
Sent: Sunday, June 5, 2011 8:28:45 PM 
Subject: RE: Proposal: Too similar application names 


>  That all said, question remains on what to actually do on this. In a
>
>  long term I'd suggest trying advocate that there is a appropriate 
>  solution based in the upstream, might it be pop-ups (sounds reasonable 
>  to do for all the desktop environments) or something based on how KDE 
>  does it. Although having upstream to do something is, like I said - 
>  long term. Thus let's decide on what to do about this now. 
>  
>  I'd say that a number of cases this relates to is limited to a fairly 
>  small number. I am counting: 
>  - Software Update/Software Updates 
>  - System Monitor 
>  - Terminal 
>  - system-config-(e.g. date) vs. gnome control panel applets 
>  (and likely a few more). 
>  
>  As a compromise between getting rid of the problem (user annoyance...) 
>  completely and the amount of work that would have to be done, I suggest 
>  that we simply target these applications and modify the desktop files 
>  so that they become distinguishable. That means in the menus and on the 
>  first sight, whatever *.desktop field is responsible for that in particular 
>  environments. Should we manage to push having a popup in Upstream, that 
>  would be great later on.  
I agree, this is a good starting point. I don't really see the point of the popups, 
but if other folks think they're necessary, I won't argue. 



>  Now, should we agree on this quickfix now, how to do that? Am I right
>
>  that this would mean asking the maintainers of these cca 10 packages to 
>  change the *.desktop files in the packaging process? Do the *.desktop 
>  files come from upstream or are they made or at least modified already 
>  by Fedora? I suppose it would be better if they already get modified, 
>  as then the single extra edit would be less painful for maintainers. 
>  Still - sounds relatively painless.  
In theory, the technical side should be a thirty second fix. The issue would 
be deciding new names. Some things shouldn't be too difficult, such as 
renaming Software Updates to Software Sources. 

>  We can also consider making a simple (e.g. targeting just default
> live 
>  installs) release criterion that would "force" such, though I'd think 
>  having it done on "voluntary" basis is more appropriate.  
I wonder if this should be a QA test? It would help with improving the 
end product for us to check things like this, but it is also fairly subjective 
as to what constitutes as 'too similar.' I'm for it, but the aforementioned 
subjective nature makes coming up with a clear release criteria difficult. 

John. 

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Proposal: Too similar application names

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 06:14 -0400, Vitezslav Humpa wrote:

>  > As a compromise between getting rid of the problem (user
>  annoyance...)
>  > completely and the amount of work that would have to be done, I
>  suggest
>  > that we simply target these applications and modify the desktop
>  files
>  > so that they become distinguishable. That means in the menus and on
>  the
>  > first sight, whatever *.desktop field is responsible for that in
>  particular
>  > environments. Should we manage to push having a popup in Upstream,
>  that
>  > would be great later on.
>  
>  I agree, this is a good starting point.  I don't really see the point
>  of the popups,
>  but if other folks think they're necessary, I won't argue. 
Just as a note on this one, I found that a bug is already filed for the
most infamous case, Software Update / Software Updates:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=702772

and has been passed on to upstream:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649823

I hope Richard will be able to get to that soon.

That leaves terminal / Terminal, and all the system-config-* vs.
control-center components (things like Date & Time are identical between
the two). That seems a larger problem than just the menu entries,
though. There's kind of a demarcation question here; GNOME seems to have
decided various settings should be controlled by the desktop, and Fedora
probably needs to decide where it stands on that, whether all our other
desktop environments agree, and how to deal with overlapping tools for
such settings from all standpoints, not just menu entries. Where we
agree that something should be handed off from s-c-* to desktop control,
we should check on the current status of what the s-c-* app is capable
of and whether the GNOME app can do all the same stuff, and whether the
other desktops make it possible to deal with the same settings, I guess.

(I wonder if it might be good for there to be a cross-desktop list
within Fedora, for things that concern all desktop environments? This
cross-posting gets unwieldy.)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Proposal: Too similar application names

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 17:27 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:

>  Just as a note on this one, I found that a bug is already filed for
> the
>  most infamous case, Software Update / Software Updates:
>  
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=702772
>  
>  and has been passed on to upstream:
>  
>  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649823
>  
>  I hope Richard will be able to get to that soon.
>  
>  That leaves terminal / Terminal, 
Filed a bug for this one:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=714835
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Proposal: Too similar application names

[Vitezslav Humpa]

>  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649823
>
>  I hope Richard will be able to get to that soon. 
It's great that stones are moving on this one! It's been the most
obvious one. Did you bring this to Richard already or should I reach
him? Not sure now :)

>  That leaves terminal / Terminal, and all the system-config-* vs.
>  control-center components (things like Date & Time are identical
>  between
>  the two). That seems a larger problem than just the menu entries,
>  though. There's kind of a demarcation question here; GNOME seems to
>  have
>  decided various settings should be controlled by the desktop, and
>  Fedora
>  probably needs to decide where it stands on that, whether all our
>  other
>  desktop environments agree, and how to deal with overlapping tools for
>  such settings from all standpoints, not just menu entries. Where we
>  agree that something should be handed off from s-c-* to desktop
>  control,
>  we should check on the current status of what the s-c-* app is capable
>  of and whether the GNOME app can do all the same stuff, and whether
>  the
>  other desktops make it possible to deal with the same settings, I
>  guess. 
I went through config utilities across different environments. In some
cases definitely the s-c-* are being relied to for configuration
completely, notably in cases of LXDE and Xfce too. Sometimes they
overlap with the desktop environment specific utilities, but do the
configuring in different scopes - e.g. s-c-keyboard will set the global
system layout while xfce4 keyboard settings does it session-wise. Well,
I'd say there is no point discussing the future of s-c-* utilities in
respect to these environments, they are needed.

Gnome(and KDE), perhaps with some exceptions, seem to cover s-c-*
options rather well. I think we should consider simply removing the
conflicting s-c-* from the menus altogether, thus getting rid of the
duplicity. Should the user need to access these particular s-c-*
utilities, they will still be present in the system.

These are the ones, that are duplicate to the gnome-control-panel tools:
system-config-date (Date & Time vs. Date and Time)
system-config-printer (Printing vs. Printers)
system-config-users (Users and Groups vs. User Accounts)

Thoughts?

>  (I wonder if it might be good for there to be a cross-desktop list
>  within Fedora, for things that concern all desktop environments? This
>  cross-posting gets unwieldy.) 
+1, with danger of not too many people subscribing for it which could
bring back the need to "cc" again

--
Vita Humpa
Fedora QA

Proposal: Too similar application names

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 11:50 -0400, Vitezslav Humpa wrote:

>  Gnome(and KDE), perhaps with some exceptions, seem to cover s-c-*
>  options rather well. I think we should consider simply removing the
>  conflicting s-c-* from the menus altogether, thus getting rid of the
>  duplicity. Should the user need to access these particular s-c-*
>  utilities, they will still be present in the system.
>  
>  These are the ones, that are duplicate to the gnome-control-panel tools:
>  system-config-date (Date & Time vs. Date and Time)
>  system-config-printer (Printing vs. Printers)
>  system-config-users (Users and Groups vs. User Accounts)
>  
>  Thoughts? 
Need to check that the GNOME / KDE tools can set these things
system-wide (usually done via PolicyKit integration I think), but in
principle, yes. Well, rather than remove them from the menus, we could
make them NotShowIn (or whatever the keyword is) GNOME and KDE.
Desktop / KDE teams, wdyt?
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Proposal: Too similar application names

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 09:59 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
>  On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 11:50 -0400, Vitezslav Humpa wrote:
>  
>  > Gnome(and KDE), perhaps with some exceptions, seem to cover s-c-*
>  > options rather well. I think we should consider simply removing the
>  > conflicting s-c-* from the menus altogether, thus getting rid of the
>  > duplicity. Should the user need to access these particular s-c-*
>  > utilities, they will still be present in the system.
>  > 
>  > These are the ones, that are duplicate to the gnome-control-panel tools:
>  > system-config-date (Date & Time vs. Date and Time)
>  > system-config-printer (Printing vs. Printers)
>  > system-config-users (Users and Groups vs. User Accounts)
>  > 
>  > Thoughts?
>  
>  Need to check that the GNOME / KDE tools can set these things
>  system-wide (usually done via PolicyKit integration I think), but in
>  principle, yes. Well, rather than remove them from the menus, we could
>  make them NotShowIn (or whatever the keyword is) GNOME and KDE.
>  Desktop / KDE teams, wdyt? 
I would really rather they weren't installed at all, but that would do
fine in the meanwhile.

Proposal: Too similar application names

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 18:21 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:

>  > Need to check that the GNOME / KDE tools can set these things
>  > system-wide (usually done via PolicyKit integration I think), but in
>  > principle, yes. Well, rather than remove them from the menus, we could
>  > make them NotShowIn (or whatever the keyword is) GNOME and KDE.
>  > Desktop / KDE teams, wdyt?
>  
>  I would really rather they weren't installed at all, but that would do
>  fine in the meanwhile. 
Well, I don't see why we shouldn't do both. Don't install 'em by default
for GNOME and KDE spins, *and* make 'em NotShowIn desktops where they're
not really needed, so that if people install them for use in Xfce or
LXDE or whatever, they don't show up in GNOME or KDE.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Proposal: Too similar application names

[Vitezslav Humpa]

>  > > Need to check that the GNOME / KDE tools can set these
> things
>  > > system-wide (usually done via PolicyKit integration I think), but
>  > > in
>  > > principle, yes. Well, rather than remove them from the menus, we
>  > > could
>  > > make them NotShowIn (or whatever the keyword is) GNOME and KDE.
>  > > Desktop / KDE teams, wdyt?
>  >
>  > I would really rather they weren't installed at all, but that would
>  > do
>  > fine in the meanwhile. 
I wouldn't remove them completely *just yet* at least for the GNOME
spin - as the s-c-* utilities offer little extra configurability not
provided by the control panel applets yet (I checked for the 3
menu-duplicate items in particular), though generally they seem to
intersect nicely(but not completely) both in features and scope.
Additionally there are also some dependencies to them (notably anaconda
and firstboot for s-c-date, s-c-users and s-c-keyboard...)

When it comes to KDE spin, I see no point in keeping them as
systemsettings currently provides for then just fine. Exception being
again s-c-* needed for firstboot.

>  Well, I don't see why we shouldn't do both. Don't install
> 'em by
>  default
>  for GNOME and KDE spins, *and* make 'em NotShowIn desktops where
>  they're
>  not really needed, so that if people install them for use in Xfce or
>  LXDE or whatever, they don't show up in GNOME or KDE. 
Definitely. I will try out how the NotShowIn / OnlyShowIn works in
practice in different desktop environments.