amaroK is now Amarok

Thursday, June 8. 2006

As one of the results of our K3M multimedia meeting in the Netherlands, your favourite media player is now called "Amarok". Say goodbye to "amaroK" and its various misspellings "AmaroK", "aMar0k", and friends. However, you may still call it Anorak, this is officially acceptable

For those of you not following the mailing list, here's a copy of my arguments pro name change as discussed on the list, to help you understand our motivations behind the change:

1) Misspelling of the name is inevitable. In many languages (e.g. French) it's downright an error and unacceptable to start a sentence without a capital letter. So in official media it is always going to be spelt "AmaroK" at the start of a sentence, and possibly also in mid sentence. We're provoking this misspelling.

Here are some excerpts from the Helix engine desktop file:

Comment[et]=AmaroKi plugin
Comment[fr]=Module pour AmaroK

2) It was a funny idea when Amarok was young, but nowadays it just seems quirky.

3) The name is unusual enough not to require additional attention from special capitalization.

4) Amarok is intended to be a software for all desktops, not just KDE. The capital K suggests that it's a KDE only application.

5) Changing the name earlier is easier than later, assuming that our popularity is still growing.

6) The Amarok logo does in no way reflect the current spelling. If anything, it looks like "amarOk".

7) The various misspellings hurt name branding. There should be one brand "Amarok", and misspelling weakens our brand.

Posted by Mark Kretschmann in markey at 05:46 | Comments (20) | Trackbacks (0)

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Yay, way to go!
Now you gave me something to do, converting amaroK-svn (now known as Amarok-svnm, of course)

Expect version 3.1 really soon...

#1 Firetech (Homepage) on 2006-06-08 06:36 (Reply)

If markey says so, its definitely true

#2 Enr1X (Homepage) on 2006-06-08 06:38 (Reply)

Well, as a simple user of Amarok I don't care too much how it's called - as long as it's still the best audio player.

#3 blaster999 (Homepage) on 2006-06-08 06:44 (Reply)

Good idea, and I agree with all your points except 4.
Amarok is as much a KDE application as pretty much anything that comes with KDE, ie KWrite or Kate.
If it depends on KDE Libraries, its a KDE application, in as much as anything that uses GNOME libraries is a GNOME application.

I don't think anyone seriously thinks that you can't run KDE applications in GNOME or vice versa, but they don't integrate properly.

#4 Mike Arthur (Homepage) on 2006-06-08 07:49 (Reply)

@M. Aurthor

I've heard rumour that Amarok 2.0 will windows compatible also.

#4.1 daryl on 2006-06-08 11:09 (Reply)

so is kde4 ..

#4.1.1 jamie on 2006-06-08 11:19 (Reply)

That's great. The K thing is a bit anoying. With KDE4 a lot of apps will come without a K (as you already see with plasma, phonon, etc)

Amarok is a great name

#5 MikeT on 2006-06-08 10:19 (Reply)

And the new name also works better with Wikipedia

Don't forget to update articles.

#6 Jure Repinc (Homepage) on 2006-06-08 11:00 (Reply)

English wikipedia is updated since some hours ago. (I did some extra work right now)

#6.1 Firetech (Homepage) on 2006-06-08 11:20 (Reply)

Aw, I'm kind of put out by this, I like the ending capital k, but I agree that the capital A is better for name branding... And not to be debbie downer or anything, but KDE exclusivity is my favorite.

#7 droiders on 2006-06-08 12:53 (Reply)

nice move =))

as for poin #4, there are no "kde only" apps really. an app may be a kde app, but it can roam broadly.

of course, using all those crunch-tastic kde apps together is the best cure for the summertime blues.

#8 Aaron Seigo on 2006-06-08 13:46 (Reply)

twas about time, good call.

#9 stokedfish on 2006-06-08 16:48 (Reply)

Is it official and ultimate (final) information? I want to change entries about Amarok in polish wikipedia.

#10 pbm on 2006-06-09 03:47 (Reply)

Yup, the version in SVN is now called Amarok.

#10.1 Firetech (Homepage) on 2006-06-09 04:06 (Reply)

Amarok is intended to be a software for all desktops, not just KDE. The capital K suggests that it's a KDE only application.

Does this mean I should now file announcements about Amarok on "A Qt Blog" under "Qt Applications" rather than "KDE Applications"?

#11 Matt Smith (Homepage) on 2006-06-09 08:24 (Reply)

Whatever.

#11.1 Mark Kretschmann on 2006-06-09 09:09 (Reply)

I agree with the decision and most of the reasons provided, but:

4) Amarok is intended to be a software for all desktops, not just KDE. The capital K suggests that it's a KDE only application.

...is a lot of rubbish. It suggests it's a KDE application, not a KDE-only application.

#12 apokryphos on 2006-06-09 09:05 (Reply)

Just the other day we were described as the media player from the KDE project. So I wouldn't say it was a load of rubbish.

It was an article on Newsforge that said that.

#12.1 Max Howell (Homepage) on 2006-06-09 11:38 (Reply)

Just a random thank-you for the name change, especially when the name remained the same and you didn't change it to "sKreechingchalKontheblacKboard" or something. After all, one of the reasons - and not even the small one - I chose Amarok was the extremely neat name. =)

I agree Amarok isn't KDE's exclusive possession; I'm just a GNOME person who happens to use a few KDE apps. I hope this will help, if a little bit, for others to use it too. I'm not a big fan of K's and G's in names just for their sake; it was cute in 2000 when no one cared much, but now it could be problematic. The lesson is, just pick good names for your apps, whatever the inspiration =)

Now all I've got to do is to uncondition myself to type the name properly. It'd help if the app itself would show this soonish... =)

#13 WWWWolf (Homepage) on 2006-06-11 04:47 (Reply)

Scott Miller, game-developer, publisher and all-round worth admiring chap describes how Nokia's N-gage was a mistake name due to the unusal spelling and hyphen:

http://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/2004/03/not_ngaging.html

So I feel even more happy with our decision.

#14 Max Howell (Homepage) on 2006-07-05 09:21 (Reply)

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