Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the excellent-smithers dept.
kdgarris writes: "The KDE team has released the second beta for the KDE 2.0 desktop environment. Check out the announcement here." The new-and-improved list is pretty lengthy and very impressive. Worth a look see.
I don't have Kleopatra (yet) but I run the 06082000 build and it just keeps getting better. A lot of more evident bugs that were in Konfucious are gone now and the whole lot is really coming together. My only concern is the state of Konqueror which still seems too flakey for any real browsing, still looks more of a proof of concept thing. Koffice is usable now as is and I can recommend Kword to anyone frustrated with the hopeless UI of MS Word. I never used FrameMaker but this frame concept has much more appeal to me than the blooming MS Word templates that never work properly for anything beyond a two page letter.
I have a big beef with KDE though. No not the licensing silly! It's the fact that they ditched Corba as their component architecture. Why? It's not slow at all if you use in-process servers it's elegant in most languages and wiht the addition of POA it's extremely flexible. The argument that CORBA is to difficult to master for Joe sixpack developer doesn't hold anymore since the Henning Vinoski book's out. My biggest concern is that with OMG adopting the Corba Component Model all DCOPs and Bonobos will effectively become proprietary solutions. CCM will provide good intergration with JavaBeans which I'm sure all Java affectionados will appreciate too. Why oh why did they have to rid of CORBA?!
Re:It's getting nice
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
Here's a quote from David Faure concerning this:
-- snip --- I think www.kde.org/technology.html (mosfet's) speaks quite well about this. If not, my take on it is:
- stability (that's the main one. If you used pre-canossa KOffice, you know what a real stability problem with embedding is). - wrong approach - starting servers for embedded components, leads to servers left running after you exit the main app (ok, that's a bug, but it shows wrong design IMHO. What should be one application was a set of distributed ones, hence this kind of problems). - memory usage and slow performances - but people associate this with MICO more than with CORBA in general. Well, we'll never really know, but in any case we had to do something about this. - the interoperability we were supposed to benefit from it was null. gnome uses an orbit-specific authentication mechanism which made interoperability as difficult as it is now, and nobody ever had any interest in making the CORBA things in gnome and KDE work together anyway.
In short, I always say: we had all the disadvantages of distributed computing (stability, reliability, performance issues) for something that is not distributed, in 99% of the cases - a desktop is local, most of the time.
But it was fun, writing sources that nobody could read afterwards:/. CORBA programming is like perl. Write once, read never;-)
Welcome to the Bleeding Edge of Software Development! New Feartures in "Bleeding Edge App4 V2.20.0.1"
Breaks all existing programs. Breaks all existing configuration files. Get to spend quality time (ie: tech support) with users. Corrupts old data files. Need to compile 16 megs of *NEW* libaries to work..
Seriously though, this isn't meant as a flame, but why do you *HAVE* to upgrade *RIGHT NOW*? If KDE (whatever version you are using) works for you, why not stick with it? Wait till KDE 2.0 gets tested and debugged by more users, and wait till you almost have to upgrade. (this advice is only toward desktops, other software may differ)
Or just wait till you upgrade you distro in 2-12 months, it should have the lastest and greatest KDE version precompiled for ya. If you don't feel like compiling hunderards of megs of sources, don't, wait till you need or want a really cool fearture, then do it then.
--
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
What's all the whinging for?
by
trellick
·
· Score: 4
Grow up. Stop all this 'Gnome is waay better that KDE doode' and vice-versa crap.
That's the point of open-source you get a CHOICE, you try it, you like it, you use it. You don't like it, then you don't use it. [and it doesn't cost the earth!]
And for those people who carp out about "well I don't need that I'm better of with a chisel, a rock, my vt100 terminal and a 1200/75 modem!", well fine!.....
BUT do you really thing the legions of windoze users are going to be tempted to move across to something that doesn't look purty and do what they could do??
Half of them spontaneously combust at the sight of a command line! [Trust me on this one;) ]
Personally, I take me hat off to both the KDE/GNOME boys and girls and thank them profusely for BOTH doing something different and moving their products [and Linux] onto the desktop of more and more users.
True. I never much liked linux naming conventions, which tended to favor arbitrary sounding acronyms over attractive names. For example, WinAmp vs. xmms, or Windows Explorer vs. kfm. I'm glad to see KDE at least moving towards names like Konqueror rather than kwb or some such. Plus, with competing widget sets, it's convenient to know right off the bat which goes with what.
Red Hat Linux packages available
by
bero-rh
·
· Score: 3
Red Hat Linux (tested on 6.2) packages for beta 2 for x86, alpha and sparc are now available at http://www.bero.org/kde/.
-- This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
jbarnett wanted to know: Seriously though, this isn't meant as a flame, but why do you *HAVE* to upgrade *RIGHT NOW*? If KDE (whatever version you are using) works for you, why not stick with it? Wait till KDE 2.0 gets tested and debugged by more users, and wait till you almost have to upgrade. (this advice is only toward desktops, other software may differ)
Just a wild guess here, but -- maybe to test the silly thing? Remember, this is open-source software. We don't pay for it in cash, and not everyone can add code, but we can all add eyeball time. Which is the coin of the open-source world.
You do intend to pay your dues, don't you?
-- Lacking <sarcasm> tags,/. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
Yeah, can anyone help me with a Linux problem I have? I tried GNOME and liked it better, so I wanted to remove KDE. I got rid of all the packages starting with "k", and now LILO crashes.
j/k
--
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
YOUR TROLL SCORE IS
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4
4
You trolling skills are very rough and need to be honed. You lose major points by falling into the trap of many new trollers, you are way too obvious. Lets do some in depth analysis on your troll:
Wow. Yet another program whose job it is to devour my entire screen so I can run half-baked programs that duplicate everything I already have. No thanks
You troll entry point here is all wrong. If you start your troll routine on an agressive it sets off a red flag for the judges.I realize your adrenaline is runnig high but you need to start off a little slower to be an effictive troll
Give me a break. KDE and GNOME are worthless. I can run any program I want without a huge "panel", without a start button, and without a bloated gui. The insistence of the KDE and GNOME teams upon you only using their software is sickining. Why shouldn't I use software that hasn't been "blessed" by KDE with a spot on the K menu, or on the panel?
Okay now your deep into your troll here but your form is all wrong. Instead of going with the angry self-rightous tone maybe you should try the "I'm a confused newbie" tone, or my favorite, the "I'm a seasoned computer proffesional" tone. The angry troll rarely works well
Thanks, but I think I'll stick to xterm. It has a better interface anyway
Your troll dismount is sloppy and not well thought out. You really need a lot of work here.
Let me try to answer your questions about the current status of khtml (the html rendering engine of konqueror):
You can use aswell as to include html subpages. Or do you mean including the html directly? This is nowhere defined in the HTML standards AFAIK.
CSS positioning is supported except for fixed, but I'm confident we'll have that working by the time we release KDE2.
CSS2 support is however far from being complete.:before and:after pseudoclasses are still not supported, neither is the text-shadow property. But to be honest, there isn't a single browser out having support for text-shadow, the same is true for a lot of other CSS2 properties.
PNG alpha channels are not supported, but that is a limitation of X11 rather than konqueror. One could in principle work around that, but the price to pay for it is quite heavy, since one has to get the pixmap below the image from the server, blend the image on top and send the result back to the server. This would slow down rendering more than I am willing to compromise on for such a feature.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by XML namespace selection in CSS2 sheets. Anyway, khtml unfortunately still doesn't have support for XML (xhtml is supported however), just because the developers we have are booked out with other things.
You might be interested in this page: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/css/test /results It shows a comparison between several browsers, including Konqueror, regarding CSS, CSS2, etc...
I can give a short summary about the current status of khtml.
Html4: about 95% implemented.
CSS1: about 80%-90% implemented. Only very few properties are still missing.
CSS2: about 40%. Together khtml's CSS support is not far away from what IE5 on windows offers.
DOM Level 1: Almost complete. The HTML part is completely implemented, a few thigs specific to XML are still missing.
DOM Level2: The CSS part, traversal and ranges are implemented. Still missing are the events. This means about 70% is implemented.
Support for java applets is mostly complete.
Netscape plugins (flash, real player, etc) work.
Javascript: The core (ecma-262 version3) ist almost complete, but the DOM bindings still need some work.
khtml has support for bidirectional scripts (hebrew and arabic).
it is pretty fast:-)
khtml is still a bit buggy on some pages, but we expect to get that fixed until the release of KDE2. As long as you don't need too much javascript it is already very useable and many people are using konqueror as their main browser.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a big beef with KDE though. No not the licensing silly! It's the fact that they ditched Corba as their component architecture. Why? It's not slow at all if you use in-process servers it's elegant in most languages and wiht the addition of POA it's extremely flexible. The argument that CORBA is to difficult to master for Joe sixpack developer doesn't hold anymore since the Henning Vinoski book's out. My biggest concern is that with OMG adopting the Corba Component Model all DCOPs and Bonobos will effectively become proprietary solutions. CCM will provide good intergration with JavaBeans which I'm sure all Java affectionados will appreciate too. Why oh why did they have to rid of CORBA?!
Welcome to the Bleeding Edge of Software Development! New Feartures in "Bleeding Edge App4 V2.20.0.1"
Breaks all existing programs.
Breaks all existing configuration files.
Get to spend quality time (ie: tech support) with users.
Corrupts old data files.
Need to compile 16 megs of *NEW* libaries to work..
Seriously though, this isn't meant as a flame, but why do you *HAVE* to upgrade *RIGHT NOW*? If KDE (whatever version you are using) works for you, why not stick with it? Wait till KDE 2.0 gets tested and debugged by more users, and wait till you almost have to upgrade. (this advice is only toward desktops, other software may differ)
Or just wait till you upgrade you distro in 2-12 months, it should have the lastest and greatest KDE version precompiled for ya. If you don't feel like compiling hunderards of megs of sources, don't, wait till you need or want a really cool fearture, then do it then.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Grow up. Stop all this 'Gnome is waay better that KDE doode' and vice-versa crap.
;) ]
That's the point of open-source you get a CHOICE, you try it, you like it, you use it. You don't like it, then you don't use it. [and it doesn't cost the earth!]
And for those people who carp out about "well I don't need that I'm better of with a chisel, a rock, my vt100 terminal and a 1200/75 modem!", well fine!.....
BUT do you really thing the legions of windoze users are going to be tempted to move across to something that doesn't look purty and do what they could do??
Half of them spontaneously combust at the sight of a command line! [Trust me on this one
Personally, I take me hat off to both the KDE/GNOME boys and girls and thank them profusely for BOTH doing something different and moving their products [and Linux] onto the desktop of more and more users.
Roll on September and KDE 2.0 final!
Compatibility is a nifty thing to have.
.kdelnk files have been replaced with a .desktop file standard, being used by GNOME and KDE now.
That's why with KDE 2, KDE has dropped a bunch of KDE-specific things in favor of more general standards:
KDE Drag and drop --> X Drag and Drop
KDE Window manager hints --> NET WM-SPEC
KDE Session Management --> X Session Management
These three things can allow for many apps to work with KDE, and vice-versa, without even requiring the use of KDE libraries.
As far as GNOME-KDE compatibility, the
True. I never much liked linux naming conventions, which tended to favor arbitrary sounding acronyms over attractive names. For example, WinAmp vs. xmms, or Windows Explorer vs. kfm. I'm glad to see KDE at least moving towards names like Konqueror rather than kwb or some such. Plus, with competing widget sets, it's convenient to know right off the bat which goes with what.
Red Hat Linux (tested on 6.2) packages for beta 2
for x86, alpha and sparc are now available at http://www.bero.org/kde/.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
jbarnett wanted to know:
Seriously though, this isn't meant as a flame, but why do you *HAVE* to upgrade *RIGHT NOW*? If KDE (whatever version you are using) works for you, why not stick with it? Wait till KDE 2.0 gets tested and debugged by more users, and wait till you almost have to upgrade. (this advice is only toward desktops, other software may differ)
Just a wild guess here, but -- maybe to test the silly thing? Remember, this is open-source software. We don't pay for it in cash, and not everyone can add code, but we can all add eyeball time. Which is the coin of the open-source world.
You do intend to pay your dues, don't you?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
j/k
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
4
You trolling skills are very rough and need to be honed. You lose major points by falling into the trap of many new trollers, you are way too obvious. Lets do some in depth analysis on your troll:
Wow. Yet another program whose job it is to devour my entire screen so I can run half-baked programs that duplicate everything I already have. No thanks
You troll entry point here is all wrong. If you start your troll routine on an agressive it sets off a red flag for the judges.I realize your adrenaline is runnig high but you need to start off a little slower to be an effictive troll
Give me a break. KDE and GNOME are worthless. I can run any program I want without a huge "panel", without a start button, and without a bloated gui. The insistence of the KDE and GNOME teams upon you only using their software is sickining. Why shouldn't I use software that hasn't been "blessed" by KDE with a spot on the K menu, or on the panel?
Okay now your deep into your troll here but your form is all wrong. Instead of going with the angry self-rightous tone maybe you should try the "I'm a confused newbie" tone, or my favorite, the "I'm a seasoned computer proffesional" tone. The angry troll rarely works well
Thanks, but I think I'll stick to xterm. It has a better interface anyway
Your troll dismount is sloppy and not well thought out. You really need a lot of work here.
Troll summary: Score 4 out of 10
Let me try to answer your questions about the current status of khtml (the html rendering engine of konqueror):
:before and :after pseudoclasses are still not supported, neither is the text-shadow property. But to be honest, there isn't a single browser out having support for text-shadow, the same is true for a lot of other CSS2 properties.
You can use aswell as to include html subpages. Or do you mean including the html directly? This is nowhere defined in the HTML standards AFAIK.
CSS positioning is supported except for fixed, but I'm confident we'll have that working by the time we release KDE2.
CSS2 support is however far from being complete.
PNG alpha channels are not supported, but that is a limitation of X11 rather than konqueror. One could in principle work around that, but the price to pay for it is quite heavy, since one has to get the pixmap below the image from the server, blend the image on top and send the result back to the server. This would slow down rendering more than I am willing to compromise on for such a feature.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by XML namespace selection in CSS2 sheets. Anyway, khtml unfortunately still doesn't have support for XML (xhtml is supported however), just because the developers we have are booked out with other things.
Cheers,
Lars
You might be interested in this page: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/css/test /results
It shows a comparison between several browsers, including Konqueror, regarding CSS, CSS2, etc...
I'm starting to dislike all these "Krappy" names.
Anyone else feel the same way?
KDE is great, but, as somebody with a degree in advertising, I'd submit that too much of anything is always a bad thing.
________
1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"
khtml is still a bit buggy on some pages, but we expect to get that fixed until the release of KDE2. As long as you don't need too much javascript it is already very useable and many people are using konqueror as their main browser.
Lars