About Me should allow users to choose which name is shown in the MeMenu.

I agree

All the mockups on the wiki page have the full name shown. Does that not mean that the full name is what should be shown in the panel? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu

<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu#Changes%20to%20About%20Me> shows radio buttons for choosing what is displayed in the menu title.

This looks very-very promising. It provides the functionality that has been
requested.

I’d like to point out that the full name is not the best thing to display either. For one, it’s usually very long, and takes up an unnecessarily wide amount of space on the panel. Secondly, full name are very formal. The Me Menu, on the other hand. My computer should call me by my personal name, not my full name, and certainly not my username.

I propose that the intended behaviour be updated to show the user’s personal name if possible. If there are more than one users on the system with that name, append the user name’s surname (or, better yet, just the initial letter of the surname, e.g., ‘Joe B.’). Finally, if the user has not stored any name at all, only then show the username.

The text displayed in the Me Menu should probably also be synchronized with what’s displayed in the name for the Home directory. I made a similar argument[*] about what to call that folder.

[*] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/382703/comments/85

Currently, you can change the name in the MeMenu by running these commands in terminal:

To remove the name from the MeMenu altogether:
gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 0

To show your real name/’about me’ name:
gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 2

To display the default account username:
gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 1

So is it feasible to propose that the About Me spec to get integrated for 11.04? <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu#Changes%20to%20About%20Me>

Yes, that's right. But that is not user-friendly. :)

Ignacio

El 02/12/10 14:09, Nate Wiebe escribió:
> Currently, you can change the name in the MeMenu by running these
> commands in terminal:
>
> To remove the name from the MeMenu altogether:
> gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 0
>
> To show your real name/’about me’ name:
> gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 2
>
> To display the default account username:
> gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 1
>
> So is it feasible to propose that the About Me spec to get integrated
> for 11.04?<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu#Changes%20to%20About%20Me>
>

The related bug 682153 suggests that the real name should be the default one.

Why should this be configurable? Why would anyone want to show anything other than the real name?

Because their real name is too long to fit comfortably.

Matthew: That is why I proposed in comment 5 using the user’s personal/first name where space is an issue, namely, in the panel and in the Home folder’s title. This is, after all, how normal human beings actually refer to each other.

I just can't believe how much discussion we're seeing about this issue.
It's just as simple as show username as default and create a menu so
users can decide FOR THEMSELVES what to show on their bar. Trying to
force users to something else based on Desktop prettiness is trying to
be Steve Jobs.

Ignacio

It's not about forcing people.

If the real name is the default and it is too long, how many people do you think will find out about the setting? And even if they are bothered enough and find the setting after looking for it, they probably have petter use of their time than configuring stuff like this.

And username is either something very obscure, or the user's first name non capitalized (I think this is what the installer does, right?).

I like David's suggestion about using the first name if space is an issue.

Ubuntu has no idea which part of someone's name is their given name.

ignasi, this bug report already links to the specification showing how users can decide FOR THEMSELVES what to show in their menu bar. If you'd like to fix the bug, please, go ahead.

Matthew: Ubuntu may not “know” for sure, but it still feels confident enough to suggest a username based on the first word in a person’s name. For the vast majority of users, this guess is accurate. For the minority where it is not, this can be changed manually. So, instead of the proposed choices, how about something like this (in the About Me mock-up):

I prefer to be called:
( ) [ Ivanka ]
( ) Nothing

The guess in the first choice can be changed to anything (perhaps with some character limit). This preference could also be used in the Home folder title (‘Ivanka’s Home’ v. just ’Home’). Thoughts?

In terms of the Home folder, that should be a different bug report, not the same. (This is only for the name listed in the MeMenu)

When I created this bug, the idea was to get the About Me window spec implemented. As seen here: <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu#Changes%20to%20About%20Me>

I myself would fix this bug if I knew how, but not sure on how to do this. I propose we keep to the spec that was provided.

So as MPT said above, if someone will fix this, please do.

And in terms of the decision on what should be displayed by default, I think that is up to the Desktop team.

@Nate: Since indicator-me v0.2.10-0ubuntu2 (available for Natty users) the default setting is now the user's full name as seen in bug 682153.

@Matthew, you're right. The specs are there, people can choose what they want to appear by entering 1 line of code. But I thought Ubuntu was about being user-friendly, and I'm not sure the average ubuntu newbie will never read this bug report. I'm sorry I'm saying this again, Ubuntu is about being user-friendly (...yes, among other things)

You also said that I could fix the bug. I'm probably not that good of a coder but any newbie could use this as a user-friendly work-around.

#!/bin/sh
ans=$(zenity --list --radiolist --title "MeMenu Configuration Tool" \
--text="What would you like to show on the MeMenu?" --column " " \
--column "Value" TRUE "My Username" FALSE "My Real Name" FALSE "Empty")

case "$ans" in
        My\ Username)
        a=1
        ;;

        My\ Real\ Name)
        a=2
        ;;
        Empty)
        a=0
        ;;
esac
gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int $a

#----END OF SCRIPT

or if someone wants it packaged with a fancy menu entry in Preferences, they can download it here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1405254/memenu-setup_all.deb

It seems that gnome-about-me is going to be replaced by accounts-dialog as seen at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-me/+bug/675660/comments/2

opening this bug for gnome-control-center too since gnome-about-me is part of it.

That configuration dialog is deprecated in GNOME3 and Oneiric so closing the bug, feel free to open new bugs about other issues you might find though