GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 545574
Rename «Other» menu item
Last modified: 2011-06-10 12:24:19 UTC
While translating a fusa documentation to russian, a gnome-cyr@ member Timur Salikhov noticed that naming of «Other» menu item is inconsistent across the applet and its help document. The documentation section «Notes for nerds» mentions two hidden options — «Show „Login Screen“ Menuitem» and «Show „Login Windows“ Menuitem». Moreover, the screenshot in «Using the User Switcher» section of doc clearly shows a «Login Screen» item. At the same time, «Login Screen» item in the applet itself is represented with «Other», and the corresponding gconf key description is about «Other», too. I found out that this rename was intentionally done back in 2005: http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/fast-user-switch-applet?view=revision&revision=109. The ChangeLog entry is unclear about the reason of such change. The problem is not really about inconsistent naming. My point is that «Other» is a too vague label for an item which warps you back to login screen. I can't imagine how confused and frustrated my mom would be if she accidentally clicked it (given the fact this item is visible by default) without having any idea about the meaning of item. This is definetely counter-HIG and ought to be renamed back unless it really breaks or violates something. Other information:
I tend to agree... "other" what? "Other User" would perhaps be a bit clearer... but it doesn't really warn exactly what's going to happen. Seeing the login screen when I'm not expecting it usually makes me think my session has died :) (It would certainly be a less jarring transition if the gdm face browser was turned on, though.) FWIW, on the Mac, the equivalent menu item on the OS X user switcher 'applet' is just "Login Window". Which is a better description of where you're going, but does less to explain why you'd want to go there.
> FWIW, on the Mac, the equivalent menu item on the OS X user switcher 'applet' > is just "Login Window". Which is a better description of where you're going, > but does less to explain why you'd want to go there. «Login Window» item already exits there, though the setting which enables it is «hidden» (available via gconf-editor), it launches GDM in nested window.
I don't know why it was renamed to "Other" (I've always assumed it means "Choose another user from any of the ones in the list above"). James made the change, so I suppose we'll have to ask him.
Please do not NEEDINFO against non-reporters/other developers, see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=bug-status.html#status
Sorry-- thanks.
As to the original report: my guess is that the documentation is out of date, and the screenshot was never updated. I picked "Other" for precisely the reason Thomas suggests. As you're scanning the menu, you see the list of users to switch to, and "Other...", indicating that you can supply more information to get the precise user. The fact that the user is supplying more information to GDM and not FUSA is not really germane to the user, though I'm the first to say that GDM / FUSA interaction could be improved. This is also a common meme among drop-down picker menu-items. It needs to be there for the corner case where only the currently logged in users are shown, but it may not need to be there for when the applet is displaying all users.
Thanks for replying Thomas and James. The «Other» label seems a bit clearer to me now, but I still think that some descriptive tooltip would be better than nothing. Looks like «Other» may really confuse those new users who don't know what it means beforehands.
fast-user-switch-applet development has been stalled and it has been unmaintained for a few years now. Maintainers don't have future development plan so i am closing the bugs as WONTFIX. Please feel free to reopen the bugs in future if anyone takes the responsibility of active development.