Re: adding desktop files to misc packages
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007, Josselin Mouette wrote:
I'm opposed to people who drink the GNOME koolaid and call it "usability".
Call it like you want. We call it usability, and it looks incompatible
with what a number of developers expect from the menu system.
I don't think that there is something like "general usability". There might
be something that is "very usable for a certain group of users". So claiming
to design a system for maximum usability requires to define the group of
users first. You obviousely are speeking for thoses users that prefer
Gnome - which is perfectly valid, but a generalisation of this seems not
to be possible.
The way Debian works is that developers have the final word on what
happens in their packages. The GNOME team decides of what's in the GNOME
menu, and the WindowMaker maintainers decide what's in the WindowMaker
menu. If we can agree to put the same things in both menus, that's fine.
If we can't, we'll all go working on something more productive.
Well, I've also tried something productive: In the cdd-dev framework for
custom Debian distributions it is possible to define user roles that will
be presented with an extra menu entry that matches the tasks that are
defined for the CDD. The rationale behind this is that I here *know*
the users and there preferences and are able to guess what they are interested
in. Unfortunately this works only for the Debian menu system - which
should be by no means a pro-Debian-menu argument. In contrary I plan
to implement a fd.o solution as soon as possible.
The idea I want to bring in into this discussion is that even if we really
would .desktop files in all packages it does not make the situation much
better because the menu will be very long again. What we need is kind of
a task specific menu according to different user roles - this is exactly
what CDD intent to do: Define groups od specific users, support easy installation
of packages related to their tasks and prepare their dasktop accordingly.
I personally prefer a menu item for every installed package in this CDD
scope, because for a user who did not installed the machine themselves
anything that is not in the menu is "not available" or at least "hidden".
In another mail
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007, Josselin Mouette wrote:
As a consequence, this will duplicate the work, but I think we should
add .desktop entries to packages, especially games, that don't have one
and deserve it.
What do you mean with "deserve it"? Could you please give some criteria
to deside which packages deserve a menu entry? For which group of users
makes a menu entry sense and for which not?
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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