searching "openoffice" does not match "libreoffice"

[Xavier Claessens]

I think nobody knows what "libreoffice" is, probably people will intuitively search for "openoffice".

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Maybe zg needs some love for that, I think it's a reasonable ask.

[David Callé (davidc3)]

Searching for "open", "office", "calc", "writer", "text", matches LO and OO still exists in the repos.
Wouldn't it be valuing habits over consistency? If openoffice matches libreoffice then searching rhythmbox should match banshee and so on for new default apps. Wouldn't those results feel a bit unprecise for searching a particular app name?

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

I get the idea, but I think it's bad one :-) Especially in the light of what David points out in comment #2. I've added a design task, so the design-team can overrule my decision if they disagree.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

seems kamstrup forgot to change one task :)

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

In response to #2, this situation is different as LibreOffice has replaced OpenOffice.org in the Ubuntu repositories. So if someone upgrades to 11.04 and decide to use the new Unity interface they may have trouble finding their programs.

Users are still free to install Rhythmbox and it is not removed automatically on upgrades.

[David Callé (davidc3)]

"this situation is different as LibreOffice has replaced OpenOffice.org in the Ubuntu repositories."
Jeremy, OpenOffice is still in the repos, that's my point.
Nevertheless, if OOo is really replaced by LO during upgrade, this bug report makes sense, but I don't think so.

[Lucian Adrian Grijincu (lucian.grijincu)]

Ok, maybe the openoffice/libreoffice is not very clear.

But let's say Mozilla changes something that prevents Ubuntu from packaging Firefox as-is and drops to Iceweassel.

Simple users don't know about the issues between Ubuntu and Mozilla, but they do know they want their internet.

What would they search for? Firefox.
What would they see in the list? A list of packages for Firefox, but no Firefox.

Same here.

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

I've been given this quite a lot of thought lately.

My conclusion is that I think it's a really dangerous path starting to match apps to stuff they really shouldn't. A crucial example to me that involve people near and dear to me (hence they remain unnamed ;-)) is that they'd likely search for "open o" and if they see an office-like icon they'd launch it, and will forevermore be thinking they are still using OpenOffice. Looking at splash screens or what ever LibreOffice is branded with is not something they dig at all. They typed in "open office" so they must be running OpenOffice. That's just hard wired in their brains. And that's completely reasonable I think.

Not only does this mislead users, but can also potentially lead to copyright issues.

All this said I still think there are tonnes of room for improvement wrt to app metadata and search usability. There have been some initiatives on the ayatana list and I suggest people take it up there (or xdg, gnome, what ever your preferred forum is).