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Bug 312399 - Hide the desktop file entry and rename
Hide the desktop file entry and rename
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evince
Classification: Core
Component: general
git master
Other Linux
: High normal
: ---
Assigned To: Evince Maintainers
Evince Maintainers
: 313755 315593 333259 558412 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 312019
 
 
Reported: 2005-08-02 18:58 UTC by Bryan W Clark
Modified: 2011-02-13 01:50 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
A Patch! (788 bytes, patch)
2005-08-02 20:03 UTC, Bryan W Clark
none Details | Review

Description Bryan W Clark 2005-08-02 18:58:17 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.
Comment 1 Jonathan Blandford 2005-08-02 19:05:05 UTC
hear hear!
Comment 2 Bryan W Clark 2005-08-02 20:03:01 UTC
Created attachment 50147 [details] [review]
A Patch!

I think this does what I'm talking about, but what do I really know??
Comment 3 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2005-08-11 21:55:18 UTC
Jrb approved, so it's in CVS. Thanks to all.
Comment 4 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2005-08-17 21:05:08 UTC
*** Bug 313755 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Jeremy Messenger 2005-08-17 21:45:06 UTC
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.
Comment 6 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2005-08-24 18:01:11 UTC
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.
Comment 7 Jeremy Messenger 2005-08-29 22:56:07 UTC
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.
Comment 8 Marco Pesenti Gritti 2005-08-31 18:05:31 UTC
Bryan, what we actually wanted to do here? See nsh comment #6
Comment 9 Bryan W Clark 2005-08-31 18:08:05 UTC
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.
Comment 10 Marco Pesenti Gritti 2005-08-31 18:10:11 UTC
Ok, I think we can mark this fixed then.
Comment 11 Joe Marcus Clarke 2005-09-04 07:04:24 UTC
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.
Comment 12 Bryan W Clark 2005-09-06 03:53:04 UTC
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. ;-)
Comment 13 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2005-09-09 05:43:34 UTC
*** Bug 315593 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 14 Martin-Éric Racine 2005-09-09 07:34:51 UTC
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.
Comment 15 Christian Persch 2005-09-11 20:06:31 UTC
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.
Comment 16 Marco Pesenti Gritti 2005-09-16 13:21:29 UTC
I agree with Christian here... closing again.
Comment 17 Claudio Saavedra 2005-11-17 22:44:30 UTC
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?
Comment 18 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2005-11-17 22:47:36 UTC
Claudio, feel free to raise this discussion on usability list and find the way
to make Bryan think other way.
Comment 19 Bryan W Clark 2005-11-18 14:55:12 UTC
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
Comment 20 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2006-03-03 15:39:58 UTC
*** Bug 333259 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 21 Joachim Noreiko 2006-03-09 16:42:32 UTC
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.
Comment 22 Bryan W Clark 2006-03-09 17:09:50 UTC
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.
Comment 23 Joachim Noreiko 2006-03-09 17:18:39 UTC
*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. :)
Comment 24 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2006-03-09 19:59:02 UTC
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.
Comment 25 Joachim Noreiko 2006-03-09 20:26:49 UTC
I agree. This needs to be discussed on the usability list & written into the HIG.
Comment 26 Benjamin Otte (Company) 2007-05-24 11:32:05 UTC
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.
Comment 27 Bryan W Clark 2007-06-15 16:08:29 UTC
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
Comment 28 Nagy Gabor 2008-04-28 17:08:25 UTC
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.
Comment 29 Christian Persch 2008-10-29 18:17:41 UTC
*** Bug 558412 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 30 melodie 2009-10-11 08:25:52 UTC
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.
Comment 31 Bin Li 2010-08-06 03:43:30 UTC
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.
Comment 32 José Aliste 2011-02-13 01:50:20 UTC
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.