Created attachment 66481 [details]
screenshot of missing descriptions

I can not reproduce this, but I guess Will will ask the right questions 

Maybe you haven't installed the packages, where the description is missing.
I have installed all non-conflicting packages that are available in inst-source.

The missing descriptions are from language specific packages, where the language is not the currently configured desktop language.

For example, I install suselinux-manual_de but my desktop language is en.

The .directory file installed by suselinux-manual_de contains a Name[de] line only, so no name is found for en and the empty string is returned.

The .directory file is generated on install by he package.

Karl, do you think the translated manuals should have an untranslated Name= entry in this file so that the german manual shows up as "SUSE Linux Reference Manual (German)" if installed and the desktop is not using german?

I think this is the right layer to fix it at - the code that reads the file is pretty low in kdelibs and is designed to fall up to untranslated strings, not down to a translated string if untranslated is missing?

yes, it was meant to work this way.  There is probably something wrong with the sed fragment.  Can you assign the bug to me?

suselinux-manual_de is still the 10.0 incarnation (might be also a problem on 10.0...).

It already seems to work for the English manual.

Looks good on 10.1 RC4 after updating from beta7.