GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 312399
Hide the desktop file entry and rename
Last modified: 2011-02-13 01:50:20 UTC
Since we're on the path to becoming accepted into GNOME there's two minor things left to do. Hide the desktop file entry. We're a viewer and no one needs to launch us from the menus. This should still make us visible in the 'Edit Menus' so that people can turn the item on if they feel the need. Also, we should rename to be "Document Viewer", so we don't show up with such a long name in evolution's attachment menu or anywhere else.
hear hear!
Created attachment 50147 [details] [review] A Patch! I think this does what I'm talking about, but what do I really know??
Jrb approved, so it's in CVS. Thanks to all.
*** Bug 313755 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Okay, copy-n-paste from 313755. I can't find any good reason why to add 'NoDisplay=true' that caused not visible in gnome-panel, gnome-menus, application launcher and etc any longer. Not everybody use Nautilus to do the double click.
Jeremy, we was wanting to hide evince from main panel menu, not from gnome-menus and application launcher. I think it's important problem before release, so reopening it.
I don't think it's right to hide it from main panel menu by default either as I said that not everybody use Nautilus to do the double click.
Bryan, what we actually wanted to do here? See nsh comment #6
I don't think this is a release blocker, evince will work fine in the context of GNOME just the way it is now. (i.e. w/ nautilus and other GNOME components using it). What should be solved for later is how do we hide Evince from showing up in the menu and yet let people make it show up in the menu via the menu editor or whatever. To me that sounds like a .desktop file / menu editor bug, not really Evine. Unless there's a different flag to enter in the .desktop that will fix the problem.
Ok, I think we can mark this fixed then.
While I certainly understand the point of making the icon hidden by default, this does violate the principle of least astonishment. Historically, the GNOME PDF viewer has had a visible icon in the GNOME Applications menu. Removing it could confuse some users. Perhaps this kind of "viewers don't have visible icons" policy should wait for GNOME 3.0.
Or the other logical route is that Evince could wait until GNOME 3.0 and GNOME could continue using gpdf + ggv. Just to play devil's advocate. I believe the Evince team thinks that confusion will be to a minimum assuming the rest of the GNOME Desktop behaves in a desirable fashion. If there are bugs in the rest of GNOME that make Evince need a .desktop file visible again it would probably be good to address those before we reach the "viewers don't have visible icons" policy. I guess this means Evince is the first one to step in the ring and make itself known as an "invisible viewer", however I think Evince is sweet enough that no one will really complain. ;-)
*** Bug 315593 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The fact that it's a document viewer doesn't justify hiding its menu entry. Again, as soneone else already said in this thread, Nautilus is not the prefered tool for everybody. I also don't think that waiting until GNOME 3.0 makes this mandatory will make the disappearance any less confusing. From that perspective, the upcoming GNOME policy of hiding all viewers is the real problem, because it violates the afforementioned principle of least astonishment and it forces people to use Nautilus for everything, which is a big no-no; let people start applications from the menu if it makes it more convenient for them.
However, Nautilus *is* the GNOME file manager, and Evince is the GNOME document viewer. So it's only natural that the *default* is set to work the way we want to integrate into the GNOME desktop. You're still free to de-hide the menu entry if you need it.
I agree with Christian here... closing again.
IMHO, I think you have made a decision that regards to the desktop as a whole and not only to evince. If evince it is not supposed to have an entry in the application's menu because it is a viewer, then EOG neither should. Maybe what Christian says in #15 is right. But I think that as long as other viewers in the desktop have an entry in the menu, evince should have it too. I got confused because this is not consistent with the rest of the desktop. So my suggestion is, why don't you discuss this with the usability guys in GNOME?
Claudio, feel free to raise this discussion on usability list and find the way to make Bryan think other way.
Ubuntu, in their menus revisited [1] has hidden the EOG menu. Fedora I believe removed EOG in favor of gThumb which actually handles photos. GNOME is just lagging behind because no one is fighting this fight. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MenusRevisited - See Graphics
*** Bug 333259 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Use case to support the menu item: Suppose I download a PDF with Firefox. I open it from the download manager. I read it, then close Evince. Half an hour later I decide I want to look at it again. I can't remember where Firefox put the file. So I want to open Evince, and use the recently used files list to open it. But I can't launch Evince without opening a file, which I don't have.
Hi, thanks for your help. Evince is just a viewer and I've been pushing that the entire GNOME desktop not display simple viewer applications in the menus, instead relying on document based methods of accessing them. I think this is the right direction, as you can see in this bug discussion many others are following this now. There does exist a bug that you might want to follow up on instead where Evince isn't accessible from the menu editor. If this bug were fixed we could hide all the viewers and you, the individual, could re-show it through the menu editor. (In reply to comment #21) > Use case to support the menu item: The person in this use case never opened Evince from the menu item but through firefox therefore there's no reason to support the intuition that finding Evince in the menu items later would be a reasonable thing to do. I've observed in cases like this that people will usually go back to the original web site where they got the PDF and download it again. Alternatively those with the Google Deskop or Beagle or equivalent will use those to search for the document. There is also a recent documents item available from the Places menu. This is how Evince is designed to be used and why the menu item isn't necessary.
*slaps forehead* I didn't think of the Recent Documents menu. I'm too used to the Windows one being rubbish and not listing things opened in certain ways. That works very nicely :) Going back to the website is a bit silly. I take your point about Beagle, even though it's not widely available yet. Consistency with all viewers would be good. And I do largely lean towards your point of view. :)
Mine thought is that writing this rule in HIG will help with such questions. No matter what decision will be - hide or do not hide. Then we'll have consistent rule mirrored in HIG it would be much easier discuss this.
I agree. This needs to be discussed on the usability list & written into the HIG.
I'm reopening this bug because I have a use case happening to me a lot of times that is really annoying me. I need a way to get at the recently viewed PDF documents. Since I use evince mainly to look at specifications or university scripts, which at any given time are ~3 files, I can easily use evince's recent files to open them. I can however not use the recent documents folder, since it's littered with lots of source files and images, but easily loses track of PDF files after 2 hours of using the computer. So I'd either like evince back in my applications menu or my recent files menu to be smarter. Currently the fastest way to get such a menu is Alt-F2, remembering the application used for $type and then using the recent files from there.
As I alluded to recently [1] I've changed my mind a bit about hiding the entry. Having Evince show in the menus wasn't so much the problem as 2 other issues that stand out more clearly now. One is that just showing Evince or "Document Viewer" in the menu would be confusing to people who are looking to view or open documents. Evince wasn't good at helping people get started finding or opening documents and I didn't want have a lame entry like that in the menus. Second major issue is that Evince doesn't do much when you don't open it without a document. We never spent anytime trying to solve this, but Evince is basically barren when you open it by itself. So I've been off trying to fix parts of issue 1 with the new Big Board and Online Desktop project. But I only recently got off my ass to look at the second issue. Instead of having Evince open up to an empty window [2] like it does now, I think we can do some more interesting things [3] to help people find their documents through evince. This is a step away from the "just a viewer" model, but I don't think it really interferes that much with Evince's main effort. I also think other viewer types like Epiphany could benefit by bouncing similar ideas around its homepage. If we're interested in my idea for the second part it should probably be in a new bug, I just put all this in here to help explain the situation. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2007-June/msg00037.html [2] http://www.gnome.org/~clarkbw/images/evince%20empty.png [3] http://www.gnome.org/~clarkbw/images/evince%20default%20opening.png
I'm using Evince in non Gnome environment, and I find this 'NoDisplay=true' option annoying. As it was suggested in [3], run evince, "open recent" is a common usage imho.
*** Bug 558412 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Hi, I am using Evince in Xfce4 desktop. I have no way to edit the menus, unless I dive in the text files somewhere. I think it's not a good idea to hide the entry from within the menus. I had a demonstration in a LUG, and showing the user applications in the menus I could not even show Evince to the newbies there. Rather than hiding it from the menus, I would suggest to leave it up to the users to hide it in Gnome menus with their menu editor if they like. My 2 cents.
I'm use the openSUSE, and I can't find the Evince from /usr/bin/application-browser cause the 'NoDisplay=true', hope it could be no hide.
I am doing some bugzilla cleaning, so I am closing this because it's about having NoDisplay=true which we currently do. See bug #634245 about Removing the NoDisplay=true and bug #633501 about a proposal similar to the one that Bryan makes in comment 27.