KDE Programs Naming Convention

[Graham]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2008 02:46:46 +0200
"Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Microsoft has great names: Office for an office suit, Internet
> Explorer for an Internet web browser, Media Player for a media player.
> Ask someone off the street what Amarok or Firefox do, and you will get
> a blank stare.
[snipped]

That's because, in general, Micro$oft has patented or copyrighted names
and will go after others using them.

However, the mighty M$ have come up with some titles in the past which
don't make much sense.  Ever heard of Access or Works: from their names
can you tell what they do?

K3B is the burning application in KDE.  Once you know that, you will
know for burning you go to K3B.  Its actually part of KDE-Extragear,
which from the KDE website is described as:

"KDE-Extragear: Extragear is a collection of applications associated
with the KDE project, not part of the official release for various
reasons."

So its not part of the KDE project and therefore (presumably) not
subject to any naming standard that you'd like to impose on the KDE
project.....  Firefox, is of course, nothing to do with KDE but I
thought it was a pretty neat name for a browser: anyway, what does
Outlook or Outlook Express mean?  Surely those names have taken on a
description by people being aware of what the applications DO?

You mention the "someone off the street": if that had been "someone off
the street who uses Linux", they would know what Amarok and Firefox are,
and there are many Windows and Mac users too who are quite aware of what
Firefox is - and use it. So my experience is that you would not get a
blank stare from many of the people I know...but my experience may be
different to yours.

-- 

Graham Todd