KDE Programs Naming Convention

[Derek Broughton]

Graham wrote:

> 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?

Access is the worst.  Have you ever tried to google about "accessing"
anything?  That brings up a very good reason for sticking to the KDE naming
conventions.  When I google (if I ever did) "Explorer", I will get a lot of
references to something other than the browser.  When I google "konqueror",
I'm _always_ going to get browsers.

"Works" of course is an application of an age-old advertising maxim: "if you
want people to think the product does something it doesn't, put it in the
name"!

> 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?

"Outlook Express" is another use of the maxim - if you know what Outlook
does, you might expect "Outlook Express" to do something similar.  It
doesn't.  Even the address books are incompatible.  And people who rail
against Outlook for it's ignorance of email standards are almost always
actually talking about OE (Though Outlook is far worse...)
-- 
derek