Bug 198227

Summary: Severe usability problems with Ark service menu
Product: [Applications] ark Reporter: Luciano Leveroni <kleverness>
Component: generalAssignee: Raphael Kubo da Costa <rakuco>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: david.linguist, dglent, rakuco, samjnaa
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Compiled Sources   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In: 15.08
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Luciano Leveroni 2009-06-29 01:28:57 UTC
Version:            (using Devel)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Compiled sources

The service menu of Ark in KDE 4.2.x was indeed quite poor, but now in 4.2.95 it's worse. This are the current options in Compression submenu in dolphin:

-Here: Compress here? What does that mean? In which format? It compresses in tar.gz here. If the idea it's to make begginers users feel more comfortable, it's a nice idea indeed, but maybe something like "Here (tar.gz)" is better for everyone. Also, no progress indication.
-As ZIP Archive: OK. Except for no progress indication.
-As RAR Archive: OK.
-As ZIP/TAR Archive: This option really makes no sense. ZIP or TAR? Here is tar.gz. Yes, the same as "Here".
-Compress To..: OK, except the it should be "to" instead of "To". Also, when choosing the format, there are option NOT supported in my system like 7zip, so why there's it's an option? The same goes for the service menus, they should not list unsupported formats.

Thats all. Why no tar.bz2 option?

Now regarding the Extracts options:
First, they should be in a submenu just like the Compress options. The only options needed should be: "Here" and "Extract to...". The here option should be the one which is now "Extract Archive Here, Autodetect Subfolder". The autodetect feature is very nice, but it should be done automatically silently always. Think that the only case which make senses not to do that is when the user wants to extract a bunch of files in a specific folder, but in that case, he would probably choose the "Extract to..." option. Having both options it's confusing for the beginner. Or maybe the user should be notified when there's no subfolder if he wants to create one. Either way, the current way it's just confusing.

I know, some problems here are just details but those are the kind of things which make a DE look amateur. And this can be easily solved and the quality of KDE would improve a lot, Ark is an essential utility.
Comment 1 Harald Hvaal 2009-06-29 03:44:22 UTC
Not only are your opinions on some points mostly details, they are also in no way "severe" as you declare in the bug title. Adding words like that gives off the impression that you are just screaming for attention.

While some of your points are valid, I don't buy your claim that Ark's usability is now somehow even worse than 4.2. The points you describe are in fact, the result of an interface review done on dolphin a short while back.

Here's the announcment:
http://markmail.org/thread/nf3p57ordschuie2
And then changes made as a result of it:
http://markmail.org/message/jkmdqype6wudkl6h

User interface design can be very sensitive and subjective issue sometimes, and what fits for one user doesnt necessarily fit for the next one.
I will use your comments as valuable input for further development on Ark, but I hope in return that next time you can choose a more gentle approach when writing the bug report.
Comment 2 Luciano Leveroni 2009-06-29 06:13:43 UTC
Hi!
I'm sorry really. Now that I re read my report I found it quite rude, that's was not my intention.

However, there's something important. Ark's usability is NOT worse than on 4.2, Ark's SERVICE MENU it is. Ark itself indeed has improved a lot.

Really good that there's some usability tests going on. Hope the it improves in the next releases. Or are there any of these changes going to KDE 4.3?

Thanks for your time.
Comment 3 Raphael Kubo da Costa 2009-06-29 06:18:55 UTC
Most or all the changes suggested in your report relate to string changes; KDE 4.3 however is in string freeze, which means the texts in the program are allowed to change only under some special conditions.

So any fix in this regard is most likely to be available only from KDE 4.4 onwards.
Comment 4 Raphael Kubo da Costa 2009-09-20 02:18:40 UTC
*** Bug 206023 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Raphael Kubo da Costa 2009-11-06 14:39:36 UTC
*** Bug 213190 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Raphael Kubo da Costa 2010-12-08 02:18:58 UTC
Changing the default assignee in the currently open Ark bug reports to me.
Comment 7 Shriramana Sharma 2013-04-22 02:04:09 UTC
Hello. It's now almost four years since the original report but apparently this bug has been forgotten. Since the string change should be relatively easy to fix and was apparently only deferred due to a string freeze back then, I hope this can be fixed for KDE 4.10.3 now.

The important points are:
1) "Here" should be changed to "As gzipped TAR archive"
2) "As ZIP/TAR archive" should be removed.

As for the OP's request for tar.bz2, I'm not sure I'd prefer that format over tar.xz if high compression is an issue. In any case, all those extra formats can be gotten from the "Compress to..." item. IMO the service menu should directly support only the "most used" formats.

And while we're at that, personally I would prefer that a proprietary format like RAR not be given direct support in the service menu, but I leave that decision to the devels.

Please fix this at the earliest possible. Thank you.
Comment 8 Elvis Angelaccio 2015-07-22 13:14:43 UTC
Git commit c13327eecc2583d5923e3f36c730a58059543bd0 by Elvis Angelaccio.
Committed on 22/07/2015 at 13:10.
Pushed by elvisangelaccio into branch 'Applications/15.08'.

Update the service menu strings

This refines the user visible strings in the Ark service menu.

REVIEW: 120484
FIXED-IN: 15.08

M  +8    -53   app/ark_addtoservicemenu.desktop

http://commits.kde.org/ark/c13327eecc2583d5923e3f36c730a58059543bd0