Release notes have a launcher - maybe we should remove that

Elad Alfassa elad at fedoraproject.org
Thu Aug 28 21:05:31 UTC 2014


Hello all.

As you may know, we ship a launcher called "Release Notes" in our
default install.
During the F18 Launcher Purge[1] Allan asked the docs team to remove
it from the default install, but his request was rejected[2].

But now we have guidelines[3], and the guidelines state:
* An "app" is an application as defined by the GNOME 3 HIG[4]
* An app launcher SHOULD Launch software that is an actual app - see
the GNOME 3 HIG for the exact definition

And the release notes, well, are not an app (per the definition in the
GNOME 3 HIG).

Moreover, I don't really think users expect to find release notes
inside the OS itself - no other OS does that.

We can link to the release notes in our download page, our help page
on the website (which will be linked from start.fpo once I finish
implementing the new designs we got), and a bookmark in Firefox
(pointing to a local copy of the release notes) - so the release notes
won't exactly be invisible or inaccessible.

We could also go the extra step (of craziness) and copy the release
note PDF into the liveuser's Document directory (in the kickstart),
where it will be indexed by tracker and thus accessible via documents
and people who search for "release notes" in the shell would be able
to find it (why would they do that? I don't know). It's possible, but
for me it seems extremely crazy and unnecessary.

While I'm aware what I'm suggesting here might be a little bit
controversial, I do think it is something which we should consider.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/F18_Launcher_Purge
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=846316
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Elad/Draft_app_guidelines
[4] https://people.gnome.org/~tobiasmue/hig3/application-basics.html
-- 
-Elad Alfassa.


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