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Bug 636655 - massive ellipsization in the shell's app view
massive ellipsization in the shell's app view
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gnome-shell
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: High critical
: ---
Assigned To: gnome-shell-maint
gnome-shell-maint
: 609719 610871 614792 636095 640573 641524 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 639428
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2010-12-06 23:18 UTC by Christopher Aillon
Modified: 2011-04-10 22:53 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
WIP: Wrap labels in application well (12.56 KB, patch)
2011-01-06 15:10 UTC, Colin Walters
rejected Details | Review

Description Christopher Aillon 2010-12-06 23:18:15 UTC
<caillon> hm, in the shell's Activities>Applications, I get to choose from "LibreOffic...", "LibreOffic...", "LibreOffic...", "LibreOffic..." or "LibreOffic..."
* caillon should start memorizing icons better
<owen> caillon: a number of things there
<owen> - There's more room than we are using
<owen> - We should line wrap onto two lines when necessary possibly
<owen> - I suspect that LibreOffice actually adds nothing to the user, and it would be better to have the names there by "Calc" "Impress" "Writer"
<caillon> nod
* mclasen_afk found that a bit odd too, to have almost every name in the app view ellipsized
<owen> caillon: Hmm, can you maybe just file a bug on gnome.org about massive ellipsization? Probably good to get an overall plan for what we are doing before we start changing individual apps
Comment 1 Colin Walters 2010-12-27 13:46:26 UTC
*** Bug 609719 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 2 Colin Walters 2010-12-27 13:47:09 UTC
*** Bug 614792 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Colin Walters 2010-12-27 13:47:39 UTC
*** Bug 636095 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Colin Walters 2011-01-06 15:09:05 UTC
*** Bug 610871 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Colin Walters 2011-01-06 15:10:06 UTC
Created attachment 177664 [details] [review]
WIP: Wrap labels in application well

Before we were trying to make the application well and the "more"
section identical, but the new look of the dash is pretty
distinct.

So, I think it makes sense to try again to expand full names of
apps in the "more" mode.  This is what Android appears to do
for example too, and honestly - it's going to take a long
time for application authors to adapt/rename to be shorter
and concise.  LibreOffice is particularly bad...I think it
alone demands some sort of concession.

This patch isn't quite right, and could actually be quite a bit
smarter; see e.g. how Nautilus does it in
nautilus/libnautilus-private/nautilus-icon-canvas-item.c.
Comment 6 William Jon McCann 2011-01-06 16:14:34 UTC
The design was to expand the label in place when the app is selected.  Jeremy had a mockup of this once.  Though I'm not sure where it is now.  I don't think names look very nice wrapped.
Comment 7 Owen Taylor 2011-01-06 16:35:10 UTC
I don't think "expand label in place when app is selected" is a resolution to the current issues.

There are clearly some names that are just too long

 GNU Image Manipulation Program (GNU Ima...)
 
And maybe 

 LibreOffice Writer (LibreOffic...)

Falls into that category too. But I don't think that' true of

 Character Map (Characte...)
 Simple Scan (Simple S...)
 System Monitor (System M...)

If we don't want to wrap ever, we need to make sure that we've designed things so that names like these, and translations of names like these into more space-consuming languages than English aren't truncated. While the font size can't be decreased, there is likely some room for using more space than we do currently for the label.

Basically, 29/59 applications on my system get ellipsized, including pretty much every GNOME application with a generic descriptive name, and we need some combination of visual design, wrapping, and guidelines to get us out of there.
Comment 8 William Jon McCann 2011-01-06 16:52:59 UTC
We can start with making the icons bigger I think.  Most names aren't translated.
Comment 9 drago01 2011-01-06 16:56:20 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)
> We can start with making the icons bigger I think.  Most names aren't
> translated.

I tried this once ... having giant icons as "buttons" just felt wrong (besides that some apps ended up being blurry due to lack of bigger icons).
Comment 10 Florian Müllner 2011-01-25 20:25:34 UTC
*** Bug 640573 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Jonathan Strander 2011-01-25 23:36:56 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > We can start with making the icons bigger I think.  Most names aren't
> > translated.
> 
> I tried this once ... having giant icons as "buttons" just felt wrong (besides
> that some apps ended up being blurry due to lack of bigger icons).

Did you see jimmac's mockup to deal with that last (one of a few actually)?

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-design/plain/mockups/static/launcher-buttonized-uglies.png?id=7361042b95df8f1b888d983cef959b84af42b848

Currently my icon grid is 11x10. 13 across when searching. Seems a little much.
Comment 12 Owen Taylor 2011-02-04 18:09:24 UTC
*** Bug 641524 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Aleksandra Bookwar 2011-02-04 18:35:16 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> I don't think "expand label in place when app is selected" is a resolution to
> the current issues.
> 
> There are clearly some names that are just too long
> 
>  GNU Image Manipulation Program (GNU Ima...)
> 
> And maybe 
> 
>  LibreOffice Writer (LibreOffic...)

Is it possible to label the "GNU Image Manipulation Program" as "GIMP" ?

To put a short variant of a name for each application in its *.desktop file?

This does not look like the problem of the interface, this is a problem of good naming.

And making icons bigger or animate them or add tooltips - this doesn't look like a good solution for me.
Comment 14 Christian Göbel 2011-02-05 16:30:35 UTC
Please also consider the "inexperienced" users, e.g.: 
- Windows nerd - first time on Linux, no experience with free software
- Grandmother/father getting an old computer to chat/mail with their grand children (inexperienced user)

We can't expect them to:
- know the used icon
- know the name of the desired application
- be able to guess from a few letters what the purpose of the application is

We should not force them to: 
- point on every possible icon to get meaningful description (either be expanding the text or by tooltips), just imagine an installation with hundreds of application.
- randomly start various applications until they find one that fits their need
- switch manually to some kind of "more-mode". Your grandmother/grandfather would never guess that she/he is required to do this.

To summarize, we should try to deliver the following for all applications: 
ICON
Short name 
Maningful description

Example: 
GIMP-icon
GIMP - Advanced Image Editor

2nd Example: 
OppenOffice-Writer-icon
OO-Wirter - Word processor

Or in German: 
OppenOffice-Writer-icon
OO-Writer - Textverarbeitung

Note that either leaving out the "Short name" OR leaving out the "Meaningful description" would lead to a terrible user experience. Experienced users expect the "Short name" or brand of the application. The "Short name" is also very useful when you have more than on "Word processor" installed. Inexperienced users, on the other hand, require a meaningful description. 
Tooltips could be a solution, but tooltips have two problems: First, they do not work out terribly well on a touch-screen device (Think about left-handed users). Second, they require interaction with many application icons.

We should provide enough and permanent space to show "Name" and "Description" at the same time. E.g. allow to display permanently two lines of text (such that at least 90% of the applications/cases are o.k. without tooltips, additional text, "more mode" ...

Probably it also helps to make the icons a bit bigger to gain additional space for the name/description, as shown in the mock-up (see comment 11).
Comment 15 Owen Taylor 2011-03-01 16:37:59 UTC
Comment on attachment 177664 [details] [review]
WIP: Wrap labels in application well

Though we probably still need some sort of hover-tooltip thing for really long names, this is basically obsoleted by the big-icons approach.
Comment 16 Owen Taylor 2011-03-01 18:52:45 UTC
Going to close this - still refinements to do, but the main problem is OK for now.
Comment 17 Aleksandra Bookwar 2011-04-05 01:52:17 UTC
The result with large icons and small fonts does look ugly. It is completely unbalanced: big icons suitable for 5-years old children, and text which is hard to read. 

Please leave this bug open and at least let users suggest better solutions.
Comment 18 Christian Göbel 2011-04-08 08:25:19 UTC
I have still several examples where the text under the icons is truncated. 

Please not also that English language has a reputation to require less physical space (less letters) than other languages (e.g. French, German) to display the equivalent information.   

Unfortunately I don't see a satisfying solution within the current design.
How to similar-working UI solve this problem? (Android,Unity,...)
Comment 19 Dan Winship 2011-04-08 10:51:12 UTC
(In reply to comment #18)
> How do similar-working UI solve this problem? (Android,Unity,...)

I don't know how/if Unity solves it. Android and iOS don't need to "solve" it, because the UI has always been that way there, and so all apps just have very short names.
Comment 20 Christian Göbel 2011-04-08 13:46:26 UTC
Just for your information, this is what Unity does: 
They have slightly smaller icons, but pretty big spaces between the Icons. 
In case the text does not fit on one line they allow for a second line of text. 
Since they have a lot of vertical space between the icons, this does not affect the symmetry of their grit-layout.

Perhaps one should also get into touch with the Zeitgeist developers? I guess they need more space for displaying complete file-names, in case they use the same design. In their case an icon is clearly not sufficient to identify specific documents.
Comment 21 Jakub Steiner 2011-04-08 15:08:18 UTC
Allowing breaking into a second line sounds like a good solution to me. Currently the labels are a point size too small.
Comment 22 Jonathan Strander 2011-04-08 22:43:34 UTC
I agree, mostly about the point sizes. Increasing the size of the box would allow for that and line-breaking fairly easily. We should be able to do it without changing the grid space.
Comment 23 Lapo Calamandrei 2011-04-10 22:53:39 UTC
Line-breaking sounds like a very reasonable solution to me, anyway ApplicationsWithUberLongNames are doing it wrong.