Bug 504430

Summary:	If the desktop file's Name and GenericName/Description properties are the same, the Description won't be shown on hover
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Tamás Králl <tamaskrall42>
Component:	Task Manager and Icons-Only Task Manager widgets	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	normal	CC:	cwo.kde, qydwhotmail
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	master
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Neon
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Tamás Králl 2025-05-17 17:09:37 UTC

SUMMARY
Normally when the user hovers the cursor over a (currently not running) program pinned to the Icons-only Task Manager, the programs name and a description are shown. These are derived from the programs desktop file. If the desktop file's Name and Description (or GenericName) properties are the same, the Description is no longer shown on hover.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Pin Dolphin to the Icons-only Task Manager
2. Hover over it with the cursor
3. Change Dolphin's desktop file description to "Dolphin" (using Menu Editor)
4. Hover over the Dolphin icon with the cursor

OBSERVED RESULT
After changing the desktop file description, it no longer appears below the name in the hover popup.

EXPECTED RESULT
The description appears no matter what it is set to.

Comment 1 cwo 2025-05-17 19:08:16 UTC

There is intentional code to reduce duplicated text because there's generally no purpose to reading the same thing twice. The same thing applies to application and window titles - if application and window title are the same, we only show the application name, but if they are different, both are presented individually.

Is there a particular reason you want to see the same text twice?

Comment 2 Tamás Králl 2025-05-17 19:26:03 UTC

Ideally developers purposefully choose the description so it shouldn't be overriden. I think the reason I thought of this as an issue is that I see that some apps (even some KDE ones) set the description to be the same as the name, but that results in the subtitle getting removed. So now some apps have subtitles and some don't. It just feels a little wrong.

Also as far as I remember Kickoff doesn't have this duplication reduction for its subtitles.

Comment 3 cwo 2025-05-17 20:41:34 UTC

Seems to me like this is something that should be fixed in the .desktop files for the affected apps, rather than unnecessarily print the exact same text twice.

Again, similarly for window titles – Applictions should set a reasonable window title, and if they don't or there's really no need for one, it's better to have no text rather than the same thing in duplicate (Kmines is a good example - it just has KMines as the wihdow title, and having it as title: KMines subtitle: KMines seems ridiculous.

If this is a real problem, I think it would make more sense to have the same deduplication in Kickoff (though I wonder if it's really necessary, I couldn't find one in the applications I have installed)

Comment 4 Tamás Králl 2025-05-17 20:54:15 UTC

(In reply to cwo from comment #3)
> Seems to me like this is something that should be fixed in the .desktop
> files for the affected apps

If you check my other bug reports, they are about just that :)

I accept your reasoning, I think I'll close this bug report.
Thanks anyway!