Version: (using KDE 4.1.1) Installed from: Ubuntu Packages Greetings KDE people. A long-standing peeve of mine is the text in about boxes. Usually when I (and I assume at least some other people) are exploring the new random apps linux tends to install, if I don't know what an app *does* I check Help->About. This is usually disappointing. Usually they say something like. "KFobulator, written by John Smith 2002". To give a concrete example KCron just says "KDE Task Scheduler". That's it! A new user who had never heard of cron may find this somewhat confusing. I'd certainly appreciate a bit more verbosity and it would come with no disadvantage (apart from maybe a *slight* increase in workload for translators). Another example, KHexEdit: "KDE Hex Editor"! Really? What is one of these hex editors I hear you cry. Anyway, I propose that someone (me?) goes through all the KDE apps and write a nice new user friendly bit about what each app actually *does*. I've made a start, perhaps this could be a techbase project...: KDE Current text: The K Desktop Environment is written and maintained by the KDE Team, a world-wide network of software engineers committed to Free Software development. No single group, company or organisation controls the KDE source code. Everyone is welcome to contribute to KDE. Visit http://www.kde.org for more information on the KDE project. Proposed text: The K Desktop Environment (KDE) is a large collection of applications and frameworks. It can run on a variety of operating systems including Linux and Microsoft Windows. Everything from the 'panel' (task bar) to KPatience (a solitaire card game) is a part of KDE. Applications that are not part of KDE can easily be run in the KDE environment however they may have a different look and feel to the consistant style of KDE. KDE is written and maintained by a world-wide network of software engineers committed to Free Software development. No single group, company or organisation controls the KDE source code. Everyone is welcome to contribute to KDE. Visit http://www.kde.org/ for more information on the KDE project. The second best desktop environment - GNOME can be found at http://www.gnome.org/ ! Kate Kate is an advanced text editor for KDE. It is intended for editing raw text, rather than word processing so it does not support formatting text. Instead it has a number of features that aid programming and advanced text manipulation such as syntax highlighting, automatic indentation and regex search and replace. KDevelop KDevelop is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for KDE. It collects all the tools needed for development of a computer program in one place. The main features are a text editor for writing the program, shortcuts to compile the program and an integrated debugger. It also features integrated version control, a GUI designer and API documentation. KWrite KWrite is a lightweight text editor, similar to Kate - the other KDE text editor. It is designed for quick editing of notes, configuration files and the like. It is not recommended for programming or word processing. Konsole Konsole is an X terminal emulator for KDE. It allows you to access the command line (or 'console') and run commands. It is similar to the DOS prompt on Windows (tm) but more usable and powerful. Konsole supports colour schemes and multiple tabs. KMag KMag is a screen magnifier. It provides a magnified view of the area of the screen around the mouse cursor. This is useful for people with poor vision or occasionally when you want to use your computer from across the room. KCalc KCalc is the KDE calculator. It can be used to perform basic arithmatic and also calculations with a number of simple mathematical functions. Okular Okular is a document viewer for KDE. It's primary purpose is for viewing and printing PDFs, though many other formats are supported such as DejaVu, DVI, CHM, etc. KCharSelect KCharSelect shows the 'character map' for a given font. This is a list of characters (glyphs) that are contained in the font. It allows you to select and copy special symbols that cannot be typed on a keyboard. Note that if a font does not contain a symbol, the system will try to use other fonts to provide it so the symbols shown may not be from the selected font. Also note that if you are sending esoteric charactes over the internet, the recepient must have the relavent font installed in order to view the characters. KRename Amazingly has a decent about box! KFileReplace KFileReplace allows you to do a 'search and replace' in many files at once. It supports advanced features such as regular expressions, creation of backup files and using the output from external commands. KLinkStatus KLinkStatus is a web link checker for KDE. It can crawl a website and check that all the hyperlinks point to an existing document.
I've changed the product to "docs" (it should be the right component). I agree with Tim Hutt, explaining better what software does is a good idea! The description could be used even from packagers of distributions for describe the programs.
The first line/section of a doc file has this information. It could probably be put into the about box?
Sorry for taking so long. I guess the reason no one touched this is that: - the scope it's too broad and - it is not about documentation, but about the information that each project can provide through the KAboutData class (which populates the "About foobar..." menu item). See the sortDescription field in the current documentation: https://api.kde.org/frameworks/kcoreaddons/html/classKAboutData.html (the KAboutData class has been available even in kdelibs4 times, with more or less the same capabilities, at least from the point of view of this bug). So, if this is still an issue, it should be brought to each program, and this bug, as it is, it is not a bug for the "documentation" product. Please note that the examples provided may not apply anymore due to the branding change (KDE is the community, not the desktop).