I Agree with Andràs.

Bug #155362 is btw the related report that tries to deal with that issue for the traditional menu. There the issue was imho a bit easier since at the KMenu we only have one place for a text what means it was needed to decide either the one or the other (per default).

Here is what Aaron wrote (and it's related to kickoff and not the traditional menu what makes it fit quit well into this report) and some remarks I just added;

[QUOTE]
a) disambiguating between programs with the same generic name. i wonder how difficult (and efficient) it would be to compare if the next or previous item has the same generic name and if so to always paint the subtext in that case. 
[/QUOTE]

imho that would be the worst solution since then on Computer A it's named "Web Browser" while on Computer B it's "Konqueror" and that only cause one of them has e.g. Firefox installed and the other hasn't.
 
[QUOTE]
 b) allowing different styles for the main text. really, the only options we need here is to turn off the details-on-mouse-hover (so that they are always painted) and define what is in the header text (generic name or specific name). with those two options one can emulate all the behaviours in kde3, no? 
[/QUOTE]

This sounds logical through I guess I didn't understand how the "details-on-mouse-hover" option is related to it.
So, a "Display Applicationname as caption" checkbox in the options?

this is a big issue for me. This needs to be fixed or there should be an option to choose in what format to display application's info.

I completely agree, this is a big ordeal for me too.

I'd like to have an option to sort application icons alphabetically by application name or description. 

Having an option to put an emphasis on the application name wouldn't fix it, because I like my menu items sorted alphabetically.

For example:

Say I choose to have the menu to have emphasis on the application name rather than the description. It should sort the applications list by the name too.

Or, if I choose to have the menu have emphasis on the application description, it should sort the applications alphabetically by description.

Right now, I do all this manually, by deleting the description in kmenuedit then sort the icons manually. This is VERY annoying. I'd like it to have an option to do all this for me, so I can sort and show emphasis on the application name or application description.

if the generic names are identical, then the additional information (app name) is shown by default.

and things are sorted alphabetically by now.

so while not every issue in this request is addressed, most of them are.

Maybe for a novice Linux user, who doesn't yet know the names of the applications that can be used for a given task, it's useful to emphasize the description. However, for the veteran/experienced user, this is too bad! Even to the novice user it's bad, once he/she learns the applications names, for the following reasons:
First, one never know what description the software author or packager thinks it's nice for the software, so one doesn't know what to look for. 
Second, the description may change from distribution to distribution and even from version to version of the package. The applications' names do not change.
Third, even if now the applications names are shown if descriptions are identical (which is not happening here using KDE 4.0.83), some applications have different but equivalent descriptions. For example, here in Fedora 9 I have DVD Authoring (KMediaFactory) and DVD Video Creator (DeVeDe). 
This is too much confusing! I know what application I want, but even then it's difficult to locate it on the menu because I don't know what description the author/packager happened to choose for it.
An option for the user to choose what should be emphasized, name or description, is needed. If such an option does not exist, it's so much better to use the application name...

I was about to report this bug too - note that I'm not using SVN, so I do not no for sure whether something has changed there already, but it still is a problem in KDE 4.2.1.

In KDE 4.2.1 having installed 4 different web browsers (especially in this category it should not be uncommon to have more than one) I *have* to hover over every single item to identify the one I need.
Only Firefox 2 and 3 are distinguishable directly since the actual name is written below the generic term "Web Browser" at all times. I assume this is another bug and it will display the names below the descriptions for all my browsers at all times, like Aaron explains above.
Though if I understand correctly this will happen *because* I have more than one browser installed. So assuming I'd have only one browser installed, let's say Opera, then it will be shown just as "Web Browser", right?

From a technical support perspective that is a pretty bad approach. The item named "Web Browser" will be a completely different program from one person to another and you can never tell what the other person gets.


Marcelo has a very good point - the description a program might have is in no shape or form a reliable source to identify the application or even be sure what it will do. There are large differences in the descriptions of seemingly similar applications, at least on my distribution (Kubuntu 8.04), so there is no way to know before how an application might be listed and where it would be found in the alphabetical list.


Seeing that KDE wants to provide the easiest experience possible for new users, I suggest the following:

- display application name instead of generic description at all times
- display generic description on hover OR display generic description in light grey font at all times
- sort entries by application name

Especially the sorting is important. Considering that new users might have no idea that their browser is called "Konqueror" there's still no way to know if they will be looking for "Web Browser", "Internet Browser", "Browser" or whatever, so sorting alphabetically by description is not much help anyway.
But once they found their 'internet thingy' for the first time (the description below the name helped with that), they will open it and be confronted with a new window that basically just says "Konqueror" in the window title - there is no "Web Browser" description to be seen once the application is started. So they will become used to the name very quickly and look for "Konqueror" the next time.

> ... but it still is a problem in KDE 4.2.1.
> In KDE 4.2.1 having ...

This should read "KDE 4.1.2".
Sorry for the confusion.

In trunk the application names are visible, but only in the Applications tab, not under Favorites or Recently Used. So the bug is only partly solved.

I'm using KDE 4.2 and even now application names are not shown, except when you hover the description. The problem of not knowing what to look for is still present, the different applications with equivalent display names are still confusing and the sorting of applications in menu is still done by description, so it seems no significant progress has been made about this bug up to now...

I think this bug can be closed, I'm running 4.4.2 and now there's a configuration option for the app launcher that allows us to set it up so that it shows the applications by their name.
In my opinion, it is fixed.

Thanks for reminding me of this bug, indeed it is possible to change the way the name is shown. Closing it...