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Konqueror Embeds Mozilla with XParts
navindra writes "KDE's component technology, KParts, has been extended to support out-of-process embedding of components theoretically including GTK components, Bonobo, and OpenOffice UNO components. Even better, the same technology could be potentially be used by GNOME to embed KDE components. Here are some screenshots of Konqueror embedding the Mozilla rendering component, and the whitepaper on XParts. This appears to be an important step forward in the interoperability of free desktops." The screenshots page has an excellent overview of what this does, and what it means. This is extremely impressive stuff people.
Embedding external parts into KDE
Straight URL iss xpar ts.html
http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~pjmenz/K/lar
Have fun.
But please remember that not all people are native english speakers (and kde in particular has a lot of european hackers)
-henrik
How is that like IE? Explain slow, I have a hard time following some posters logic.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Moderation on slashdot is getting horrid. I REALLY wish we could meta-mod specific posts instead of having to do 10 random ones.
Just a thought... don't know whether that's realistic or not... but couldn't WINE be used (after some heavy modifications, I guess) with XParts to embed Windows apps info Konqueror (or any other app).
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Well, all what this is is what Windows 98/2000 explorer already does.
So are we saying that the non Windows world has finally catching up? And who is copying who in this case?!
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
That's just it -- MS keeps taking their standards to a "new level". What's the use of a "standard" if every app that uses it is obsolete in 6 months?
__________________
I guess there is no point to answer those trolls. Everytime news about KDE come up in slashdot, they are always whining "what about those uncompatible GPL license?". Sheesh...Everything in this free software world is measured according to GPL.
First - I'm not a GNOME bigot. I'm a *standards* bigot. My complaint against what's going on with KDE isn't because I prefer GNOME (although, to be honest, I do), but because I dislike the reinvent the wheel syndrome.
I'm aware that KDE did use CORBA, and abandoned it. I think that their *reasons* for abandoning it sucked.
They used an ORB which had lousy performance. So what was their response? Not fix the ORB. No - it was to totally reinvent the whole idea of an ORB from scratch, and then implement their new non-standard ORB.
Yes, some ORBs are slow. What's the solution? Fix the friggin' ORB. Yes, the CORBA bindings can be a pain in the butt to program to. Is the correct answer to discard the entire standard infrastructure and invent your own from scratch? I'd much rather see someone *fix the bindings*.
CORBA presents a set of bindings which were a political compromise. No one likes them. But you can do CORBA and *not use them*. Take an IDL compiler, and have it generate something different, but keep the standard infrastructure.
The KDE folks could have optimized and ORB, and prettied up the bindings, and still taken advantage of the widely acknowledged standard for componentry. But instead, they discarded it, and then reinvented it.
What's the cost of that? You constantly need to rewrite code to work with KDE. I've got a ton of CORBA components that I can use in a UI. Can I use them in KDE? Sure - but I have to basically write a brand new kparts wrapper for each of them.
I just don't believe that when the standard is adequate, that it's appropriate to discard standard infrastructure in favor of your own homebrew. CORBA is adequate, if implemented well. So implement the standard well.
Exactly! Or to anywhere else. One of the most useful examples of this that I use is to drag images directly from my digital camera to web sites via ftp. Looking in the source tree from the latest CVS the kio_slaves currently are:
gzip
nfs
tar
smb
finger
ldap
nntp
smtp
thumbnail
gopher
imap4
man
pop3
sql
audio CD
Another cool feature is that the Audio CD ioslave enables you to not only play cds but to rip cds directly if you have cdparanoia libs installed by dragging and dropping the track(s)
see: http://dot.kde.org/975053591/ for more information.
KDE has one *major* issue though, nobody except those how follow KDEs development closely seem to know about these features. It really is a great desktop enviroment and looks very nice with anti-aliased fonts.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
None of what you mentioned is exciting. It's all catch-up work. KDE2 as a whole is rather exciting. So is Evolution.
But come on - HTML Preview icons, Text preview...Digital Camera supporrt. This is all catch-up work. There is no innovation here.
Windows has had everything you've mentioned for almost three years now. What's exciting is the speed of development, the Bazaar method of development, and some of the really cool projects with innovative features nearing release.
signature smigmature
- James
mmm...windows...
Just had to do it...
Gcc,gdb
Gtk+, Gimp
Grep,sed,tar,diff,bash,ar,ld,awk,ls,ps,rcs,cvs,du,
fetchmail,procmail,find,flex,gv,gzip...
Okay, maybe some of the above aren't officially Gnu tools, but they're all, I believe, GPL.
windows Me has all of that
Ever notice that you're a troll if you mention KDE and GNOME in the same breath and exhibit a preference for one over the other?
KDE has done something really cool, now GNOME wil copy it - gee, creativity just seems to flow from that group...
"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03
Ever heard of dll hell?
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Cirrectopn: What about MS decision to bastardize Kerberos?
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
even if the API is horrendous.
Thats exectly why. Corba is one of the clearest examples of design by comittee. Admitted, I have no idea, if COM* technoligities are any better, but atleast you get gui tools to use existing components easily (vb). With corba, you have to play with IDL, stubs etc... If re-use is harder then re-programming, whats the point?
A solid component model, with easy to use tools for the 80% of cases has been something Linux has missing. Bonobo vs Kparts competition Seems to be finally leading into something usefull.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
This is great news for Linux desktops. The KDE people did a wonderful job here. However, I don't see how you can possibly say "KDE is cooperating and GNOME is doing nothing". That's just being a troll. The wars are over. Put your guns down. Now there's just friendly competition. They worked together to make a Window Manager spec, and I'm sure eventually someone will make a bonobo interface for embedding KDE components. But please, don't tarnish this great moment by turning it into a flamefest.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Judging from the lack of posts. It seems slashdotters don't care about this important step forward in the interoperability of free desktops...
...the khtml rendered page looks better
The first thing that caught my eye is mozilla renders off the page - cutting off the last few characters to the right. Second thing that caught my eye is the text 'KDE wins Linux Community Award!' using mozilla turns into what looks like 'KDE win$inux Community Award!'
Does mozilla have something built in to slag off micro$oft after any word that begins with win?
heh
Seriously though, that would annoy the hell outa me. I'm sticking to Opera.
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
CORBA and COM have different goals. COM is ususally used for desktop local components whereas CORBA is more useful (and geared towards) distributed environments. Besides COM is arguably much easier to learn. However, for the purpose of this topic: what we see here resembles activeX (which is a layer above COM) more than COM. CORBA doesn't have a direct equivalent of ActiveX.
I think there are some licensing issues here that are not related to the traditional KDE/QT license bashing.
To be specific, under the GPL the theory is that if you create an application that uses open source code licensed under GPL, the GPL provisions are extended to your application too.
So what about commercial applications that allow the embedding of Kparts components covered under the GPL? Does the GPL flow back or is this a mechanism that allows proprietary developers to circumvent the GPL?
Although I am not a lawyer, I would guess that the XParts architecture with the use of dcomp certainly avoids the triggering of the GPL...
I agree! A couple of months ago, I was convinced that KDE was being left behined gnome - which isn't good (although I'm an E man, myself :).
But now - Kde is becoming attractive, even to an E user. Alpha blending, anti-aliasing, mature component architecture....very nice indeed.
Looks like the gnome team are gonna have to do a bit of work on bonobo to catch up with this.
Well done KDE developers! (i may even install KDE2.1 when it appears...).
i wish i was but oh well
Just so you'll know, after looking over the white paper a little bit, it ends up that this is actually KDE playing catch-up to GNOME. X-Parts does not allow embedding of arbitrary GNOME component into KDE. It only allows embedding of out-of-process components into KDE, which GNOME has had for a long time. GNOME's embedding also does not require any specific toolkit (see OpenOffice as an example). No, Konquerer did not have to be modified to do this, but Mozilla _did_. This support has been in GNOME for some time.
Remember, this does not allow the arbitrary embedding of any GNOME component. It requires a wrapper for each GNOME component before being embedded. This is currently available for GNOME.
I'm not trying to discount what they've done - its very, very great! But I don't want people misunderstanding it either. I'm looking forward to the day when arbitrary components from either can be embedded. Whoever does it first will simply give the other person something to build from. Let's stop fighting, calling names, whatever. It's a great day, and let's be happy.
Engineering and the Ultimate
However, this is all beneficial. When you can reuse components, the programming cycle can speed up tremendously. In the case of the Java the biggest push is for Enterprise Beans, the Java equivalent of ActiveX controls. Take a few activeX/beans, and a visual editor, and you can get the fundament UI/engine intergration completed in minimal time, leaving more time to work on the mechanics of using that data in the program. The only problem with the Java and MS solutions is that a majority of the components were closed source, so how could you be sure that a simply text box did not report back to some site on the net?
With an open-sourced based system, at least you now have a better chance of obtaining open-source components, and thus you can evaluate those components for security problems. In addition, you have the ability to modify behaviors slightly if you don't like how the default component works without drastically affecting the rest of the code since the component is really just a drop-in.
And now the fact that KDE and Gnome, which use different component models, might be able to share components means more components and options are available to developers which could enhance the user experience more.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Mozilla engineers are working on all these things to reduce the disk and memory footprint without throwing away any functionality. As it stands, it is still a fast browser, *much* better at rendering web pages and more standards compliant than any other browser on Linux.
The difference comes from being open or being closed. I always liked the idea of COM and .NET, but I don't like what MS does with it. Meaning their common tactic of embrace and expand. People get suckered in and they change the system so that you are stuck with MS and don't have any other choice. But if it is in an open environement, where all development is viewable, and source code available, and such, it can grow and be use with no worry about being locked into one system.
.NET is full compatible with Linux, then I may change my mind about Microsoft.
I'm sure we will soon see GNOME using the same technology if this catches on.
MS keeps saying that they will become compatible with others, but their record is poor in this respect. If they port something, it is usually of lesser quality.
I don't consider myself a hypocrite, unless this ends up as some proprietary protocol and I'm still supporting it.
I'm not saying everything must be open source, but I do believe all protocols must be. When COM and
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
uhhhhh...it's the xml in "xmlrpc". Read up on it.
Just a correction. ".Net" is a new look on old stuff. ".Net" is just Microsofts version of the old time sharing done in the early days of computing. While batch processing may not be standard in ".Net" the idea is the same. Everything is located in one place. It's just a new look on old technology. It's a step backwards.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
I just barfed on my keyboard. thanks.
I was actually replying to a previous post, which essentially said that the GNOME people were losers for not doing this first. I was just bringing up the point that they did do it first. I'm sorry if my tone sounded negative, it was only meant to be negative to the person who made the first post, not to either team.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Lately, I've been hearing Windows developers talk about how cool it is to use Cygwin on NT. Yet I recall using the Gnu EMX tools under OS/2 over 5 years ago.
In addition, it is especially cool having this feature in a free and open environment.
Could you spare a clue stick. What's an
out-of-process component and how it is
different from any other component? Is it
just that you need a wrapper for it?
Not all open-source software is great; lots of it sucks too. But my experience is that if it's from Gnu or Kde, it's likely that it will be good.
RANT:
...) while KDE has most of the time invented new things or rewritten them from scratch.
First Integrated Desktop Project: KDE
Second attempt: Gnome.
(Thanks for trying anyways, I doubt QT would be GPL without you, but a free qt clone [aka Harmony] would have been better)
KDE used Corba before Gnome was at 1.0. They dropped it not only because it was slower (experienced on today's Gnome desktops) but because it was very complicated to code for. Dcop was a very innovative idea and code development has increased immensely after Corba was dropped.
Bonobo was announced AFTER koffice had used kparts for a while already. It is a copy of Microsofts COM object model.
I simply do not understand you Gnome people. Gnome has always been second. It has taken over a lot of previously unrelated software (staroffice, mozilla, abiword, khtml
QT is ways ahead of GTK 1.x and GTK 2.0 (announced) will have a hard time to match QT2.2.3 and later. I mean QT is already unicode based. GTK isn't. And so on. QT has theming of a quality GTK doesn't dream of.
Another thing: GTK reinvents OO programming. Why would anyone code OO in C? Why? Please tell me?
There was one thing Gnome was always ahead in: PR, publicity and marketing. I mean look at Gnome 1.0. Pathetic. Look at all those nice themes. Great.
[Well Gnome had better eye candy=themes, but that fits]
Still I am glad that Gnome exists. Gnome has sped up the development of KDE, because if somebody tells lies about you all the time, you have a greater motivation. People run faster if somebody runs behind them.
But KDE was never second.
Last RANT: At the moment the Gnome loving FSF try to make Gnome a necessity by coding dependencies into other FSF components.
orbit -> linux kernel (Linus won't have it though)
Much worse: The new maintainer of ghostscript has publicly declared that future releases of ghostscript will have to have a Gnome GUI and will depend on gtkcanvas. Nice!
Remember when KDE was boycotted by RedHat to protect their baby?
KDE has surpassed MS Windows already, though, and soon even the unix companies will notice...
Moritz
EJB defines 2 types of beans: session and entity. Both are non-visual. They model buiness logic and data, respectively. No help in creating the UIs. But great for building business-logic and data structures.
While this is pretty cool, I can't help but wonder how people would react if Windows 2000 got a technology which has been around on Unix for a long time - "Wow, they've caught up with Unix... of 10 years ago!"
What about the Win 2000 decision to use Kerberos?
v
To be able to embed other non-KDE applications will indirectly promote the KParts component system and KDE will end up with a greater mind share of the community. Way to go!
We used to take blank motif forms and reparent a bunch of children on them...like 12 years ago.
Didn't change any lines of code to do that.
Nice to see that Mcrosoft, KDE and Gnome are finally catching up to Motif.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
First of all, DCOM, in its latest implementations, works quite well.
As for desktop and GUI apps, that is at least 50% of the battle, if not more.
You speak of a jigsaw, and that is the problem! I don't need to have to worry about what libraries are installed on my client's PCs, or what window manager or version of X they are running.... I just wanna write to a standard interface and have it all work together with a good object model. Windows 2000 and COM+ give me that. Linux has plenty of room to grow, but first people need to start admitting what is good about the way Windows works, and start adopting the aspects that make programming easier.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Actually there are excellent GTK applications.
I really like and recommend gimp and gnapster. These have no alternative in the KDE/qt world.
Also the gtk gui to vim (gvim) is excellent.
Nobody argues against this.
I fail to see how this is relevant to gnome though. None of the applications you mentioned are very well integrated into the "desktop".
The only desktop application that was a lot better than the KDE equivalent for a while was the panel, when it got stable in the last year.
Now, applets are hardly an invention of the gnome panel, I would rather credit windowmaker.
BTW, if you want to see more excellent KDE(2) Desktop! applications: Check out konsole, kppp, kmail, knode, korganizer
(I didn't even know qps. Seems to be the ancestor of today's kpm process manager)
I would have loved to see a way to integrate all that C coding talent that went into the duplication of all the KDE apps as Gnome apps, into KDE conformant GTK apps. They could have followed the KDE style guide. Instead Gnome reinvented the wheel.
ALL the gtk-apps you listed have good KDE- counterparts.
gphoto2 is platform independent and a kioslave (integrated into konqueror and ALL other KDE apps) I fail to see why the GUI choice of a digital camera driver is indicative for a good desktop.
gnumeric - kspread - 1-2-3/excel
abiword - kword-amipro/word/starwriter/framemaker
dia - kivio - visio
emacs - kwrite - notepad [ haha ]
****
You support Gnome because of gtk - Emacs???
Well KDE has kwrite, which is good enough for most people. I am waiting for kvim. And a QT/KDE-Port of Emacs has already started as well.
Mozilla was ported to QT first and today it is not toolkit based really. It renders itself on a gtkcanvas. So what.
Comeon people do you know the KDE(2!) equivalents? Have you used them for more than 3 seconds? KDE2 has been out hardly 3 month.
Moritz
Don't forget search:// .. and which search engine it goes to is configurable.
Wow, its just like... COM. Linux isn't a good programming platform for me right now because it doesn't have a standard object model. Microsoft took this to a new level with COM/COM+, and is set to do it again with .NET
I look forward to seeing a real standard on Linux, and then perhaps I can consider it for my projects.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Well, I'm guessing it's "innovative" like IE.
That is (or, umm, ie.) not very much.
That's see, component models that also exist: COM, Bonobo, UNO, XPCOM, DCOM....now, how is doing what everyone else is doing innovative?
Unless it's the Microsoft version of innovation.
It actually has nothing to do with mentioning preference. There is quite a bit of difference between saying "I like KDE better than GNOME because..." and "Those GNOME people really suck at this". In addition, if you had read the other responses, you would know that, actually, GNOME did this first, so its a moot point anyway. KDE and GNOME are both great. I generally like the way GNOME works better, but I think the KDE people have done a wonderful job. I also appreciate TrollTech doing the right thing and putting QT under a free license. That was absolutely wonderful. Great things have come out of both camps - each of the office systems have their strengths and weaknesses. However, trashing one or the other does no good whatsoever.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I continue to try to have a bit of awe every morning with my wake-up coffee. Remember, /.-ers, Linux is a freakin' amazing technical and social achievment, as it is. It isn't perfect, but I use it every day at work and love it.
Many comments here have been, 'KDE is catching up with (Windoze|Gnome), so this is no big deal.'
Umm, yes, it is. Linux copied plenty of features from Microsoft; deal with it. Catch-up means that those caught-up features are now available to the user community. The question now is, are they really useful? Are they efficient enough for daily use? Robust enough?
I just updated my KDE1 desktop to KDE2, through half a day's compiling. Although I wasn't pleased at the observation that KDE is reinventing a bunch of functionality their way so it will perform on their object tree, I still like the final result. This announcement that we can embed applications within applications is interesting, but do we want to do that?
KDE2 has cool enough features that I am willing to take some processing and time hits to use them. I frankly have my doubts about the usability of the first release of embedded components, however. I am willing to bet they will be just as slow and clunky as COM thingies. But, here is where the Linux developers can one-up their Micro$oft counterparts, in that they can probably come up with a way for these components to deliver the real-world goods we desire. I look forward to seeing how this new technology twist will play out.
Thanks KDE team for taking it to the next level! I use KDE every day to put beans on the table. THAT is the test of usability.
If you support KDE, or if you don't, you have to admit they are pretty inovative. This is very impressive. Hopefully other desktops will follow suit. Interoperability benefits everyone in the Open Source community.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
...ActiveX?
admittedly open, and a first for Unix/Linux.
Hopefully people will take it further by writing their own, and it KParts can be what ActiveX wasn't - an extensible and portable standard, and actually trusted as a download (if security is handled properly!)
Fross
It seems that all the most exciting stuff is happening in KDE. The KDE 2.1 beta has a great deal of cool stuff, like HTML preview icons, text preview, and some very slick kio plugins. Things like seeing your Diamond Rio and digital camera as just a part of your directory tree is NICE. Drag a picture off of your camera right onto an FTP site. Isn't that how it should be??
Significantly, these features are being added with a minimum of pain. The embedded mozilla required NO changed to Konqueror. Adding digtal camera support to the Image Viewer (kview) didn't actually touch the kview code. KDE is built on *very* solid technical ground, with plenty of room for planned growth. It seems that having a high quality C++ architecture really helps.
Why? KDE is under GPL, and so is Qt nowadays.
Well, Nautilus has had a Mozilla component for quite a while, so at the moment this looks as if its a me too effort. See http://www.eazel.com/images/corp/screens/dec-07-20 00/Web_View.jpg
What I'm interested in is the KPart/Bonobo bridge, and it looks as if that doesn't exist yet.
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
Ok, on the one hand, you have mozilla, which is huge. The politically correct opinion is to claim "this is because it incorporates too many functionnalities which are not web-related (mail, news, composer, dildo, XML-dynamic-interface-whatever, etc...), but that gecko, mozilla's rendering engine, is great, light, fast. etc..." The problem is: it's not true. And Galeon brings us the proof. Here we have a lightweight, unbloated, slick gtk-interface, which embeds gecko, and that's it (plus, some functionalities, such as printing and cookies are not implemented yet). And the result is... a web browser almost as big as mozilla, which immediately goes over 20 Megs in RSS (half being shared).
On the other hand, you have Konqueror, with a good rendering engine, almost fully complete, which is less a memory hog than Galeon: it's not everyday that you meet a KDE application which takes less memory than its Gnome counterpart (actually, this is the firt time I see something like this: the empirical rule used to be: if a KDE app takes N megs, an equivalement Gnome app will take Nx0.7 megs on average). What does it mean? It means that if you embed Konqueror's rendering engine in a simple Gtk/Gnome GUI, you may potentially get, at last, a fast, light, good, complete web browser, lighter than Konqueror, without all these silly kdeinit processes that you need to kill with a napalm gun. And Gtk/Gnome based, which may be significant for some. So this move is potentially excellent.
In Konqueror, use a URL of pop3://pop3server/
Watch as it asks you for your password, and displays all the emails on the server as files in that "directory". Drag one off to your desktop, or just click on one to read in right there in konqy.
Oh, and this works for SMTP urls too. Try it!
This is really cool! I've always had a hard time deciding what desktop I liked best, because half of the applications I wanted was Gnome apps and the other half was KDE apps - those times may well be gone now (if I were to choose to use KDE2).
Remember Miguel De Icaza recently talked about getting more "reuseablility/code-reuse" under Unix (I know that is badly written, but you know what I mean!) - well it seems that the KDE-Team was listening.
As it says (here: story at dot.kde.org):
This is only a first step. Other possibilities include providing transparent access to OpenOffice components within KOffice, and embedding other Bonobo components, such as the various Nautilus components, inside, say, Konqueror... The goal is to provide the most powerful desktop for users by allowing them to pick and choose whatever software they like while still in the familiar and comfortable KDE environment. KDE is close to closing the schism within the Linux desktop environments by being the first project to allow users to utilize all the software written for different user interfaces within the KDE environment with unparalleled integration.
Also, people writing standalone applications that do not utilize any desktop technology can easily integrate with our environment in ways previously impossible.
What is cool too, is the this comment:
"It is important to note, that we did not have to modify a single line of source code in KDE or konqueror to get this running."
Greetings Joergen
Folks are whining a lot "well, isn't this what Microsoft has?" - yes, of course it is, and it's one of the thigns that makes Windows such a strong platform. Does that mean we shouldn't use it? Christ no. Can we do it better? Maybe. :)
The more I work with KDE, the more impressed I am at the technical expertise and UI skill going into the product, and the less enthralled I am with GNOME.
Go go gadget KDE.
s, about to redo his machine to go KDE2 full time.
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
Nope, it's just like COM.
I pretty sure it's like this:
COM != ActiveX != OLE
OLE is built using COM
COM evolved from OLE
An activeX component is a COM component
An COM component doesn't have to be a activeX component
You are missing the point. While this really is KDE playing catch-up with GNome and Windows, people say MS stuff stinks for other reasons. One, MS stuff is proprietary. The don't always tell you what you are suppoed to do unless you're playing by their rules.
".NET" is not anything new. It is a revist of the "time sharing" from the old days. While there is not any real "timing" involved with ".NET" yet, there will be. In the old days (early days of computers), if you couldn't afford to buy a computer, you bought a terminal and rented time off of someone near buy that did have a computer. The idea is similar to what Microsoft is trying to do with ".NET". Eventually Microsoft will go away from selling "Liscenced" versions altogether in favor of a ".NET" strategy. They have taken the first step. You will have an option to buy a subscription to the new version of MS Office instead of buying the a "liscenced" version. While there will probably be a license, there is also a time table on this. You have "repurchase" you subscription after a year! The next step is Microsoft moving to either subcription only or directly to Internet only.
Why would they do this and risk the rage of the usert? Simple, it will save them money and is a goo piracy deterant(sp?). If you have purchase your subcription every year, this requires you to have an ID and they can then find illegl versions easier because the subscription software doesn't work after your subscription runs out.
".Net" at it's core is about Microsoft stepping closer to internet distributed applications. When they go directly to internet applications, you will be directly at their mercy. What you don't want to upgrade and you haven't upgraded your OS yet? Tough. You can't use our software. Your subscription to your old software has run out, and we are not selling any more subscriptions.
".NET" is a mistake. It's going in the wrong direction. Microsoft would rather everybody have a thin client and be require to do what they want you too.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
It's frustrating to watch things like this gather a lot of hype. Basically, this is *identical* to Bonobo. Big deal.
KDE has done some impressive things, but they have this unfortunate tendency to reinvent the wheel. DCOP/KParts is a reinvention of software components - AKA Corba. The KDE people originally argued that the reason for KParts was that ORBs were too slow, and they couldn't afford to pay the price of real componentry.
Since then, they've been gradually reintroducing each of the important features of an ORB, finally leading to support for out-of-process components.
Now, finally, they've reintroduced all of the features of an ORB, but in a non-standard fashion for their own desktop. Basically, they've reached the point of Bonobo, but based on a non-standard ORB. Goody.
An in-process component is one that is implemented simply by loading a library. An out-of-process component is one that runs in its own process. With in-process components, everything shares the same address space, and method calls are made directly. With out-of-process components, the components are in a different address space/process than their containers, and thus must communicate using pipes/sockets/something other than a direct method call. They have some added benefits, like not having to use the same toolkit as the parent component. As was mentioned in the article, glib and KDE both have their own event loops, which vary quite drastically. Trying to fit them in together in the same process space is quite difficult. However, if they can each run on their own, you have fewer problems with that. However, it adds complexity to the communication between parent and components.
Engineering and the Ultimate
The only problem with the Java and MS solutions is that a majority of the components were closed source, so how could you be sure that a simply text box did not report back to some site on the net?
Java is NOT closed source. At least not Sun's implementation. If you go to Sun's website (www.sun.com) you can download the source code. There are some restrictions on use as it is mostly for research/prototyping, but it is all there.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Go read the article again. This is not about embedding a Mozilla component into a KDE app. It is about embedding any X11 component into KDE.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This is open silly. Big difference here because everyone gets to play.
:)
I'd also like to say that your Windows been-there-done-that attitude is wrong. OS/2 v2.0 used a implementation of the CORBA spec in 1991 for its WorkPlaceShell Desktop. Objects baby, all the way through. OpenDoc was going to be the ultimate OO framework for apps but WordPerfect and then Novell failed on the Windows platform. OpenDoc allowed multitasking within the container. While this doesn't seem like a big deal, those OLE controls could only have one active component at a time. How boring. OpenDoc was very cool technology and was revolutionary because it made DATA important and not the APPLICATION. Monopolies ruin.... Who except Microsoft can get any technology on Windows right out of the box anyway?
This is indeed great news and Windows still sucks. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
> Well, all what this is is what Windows 98/2000
> explorer already does.
>
> So are we saying that the non Windows world has
> finally catching up? And who is copying who in
> this case?!
OpenDoc did this in 1994. OS/2 had the CORBA based Desktop called WorkplaceShell which had many of these features too. That was released in 1991 if my memory is correct.
Besides, this is open and not something used just to make sure application X doesn't run on the OS.
IMHO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
While the skedged solution works, there are some unmentioned and ugly details.
Skedged? I've never heard that before and it's not in the Jargon file. What does it mean?
Although, given the line "Those advantages are unvaluable for a lightweight and tightly integrated office suite like KOffice."it may just be another bit of KDEse.
Like monopoly controlled OS's like Windows are the future. NOT. Linux may not be the greatest OS but it is designed to be small and fast and anybody can decide how big it really gets. Windows has but one company to package it and it always choses it's designs based on protecting its monopoly.
:)
Freedom or a Dictatorship?
Like the saying goes, live free or die.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Case in point, Terminal Services (like X remote display). I'm sure if you search the archives you'll find someone effectively saying "so what" about its introduction into NT 4.0 and 2000.
Well - let me turn the tables.
So what. Way to play catch-up.
> So, when is OpenDoc coming to Linux?
It looks like it is here.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
We have to be more cautious now.
/.
Yes, this intiative will bring us to a new
level in terms of standard.
Yet, we also open up possibly gaping security
holes if we are not ever vigilant.
This might be the chance to prove Linux can do
it even as an increasingly commercially viable
platform.
rm -fR
so it's "impressive" when it is for linux, but change the name to COM and .NET and add TONS of functionality over what this is, and it sucks?
people who dis MS technology haven't programmed COM objects before, I can tell you that much.
Let's stop fighting, calling names, whatever. It's a great day, and let's be happy.
For someone who's supposedly advocating peace between the two projects, you've got a pretty negative attitude.
it ends up that this is actually KDE playing catch-up to GNOME
These developers are people, and that's really quite an insulting thing to say. I'm not going to say you're wrong - I don't know enough about it. But if you were to say, oh, "You're just playing catchup to Canadians" to an American, speaking about technology, you'd get a very negative reaction. Heck, if that particular American was big enough and patriotic enough(or if you said it in a place full of big, patriotic people), you'd probably get your ass kicked.
The KDE and GNOME projects get along fairly well, despite their obvious differences. Your attitude is what causes what problems exist - it's called arrogance.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
First, I'm a C++ hacker. So keep in mind that my answer is probably subtly (or blatantly) biased.
The answer(s) to why GNOME is written in OO C is pretty straightforward. There were (and still are) compelling reasons to do it in OO C:
1. STANDARDS CONFORMANCE.
C++ is a convoluted spec with an almost infinite amount of tremendous subtleties. When GNOME was first being devised, C++ had just been standardized and no compiler was anywhere close to standards conformant.
2. WIDESPREAD ADOPTION OF COMPILERS.
Some compilers (Sun's C++, for instance) are hideously broken. Terribly, awfully, ridiculously broken. While gcc is available for most UNIX platforms, the GNOME project didn't want to force people to use gcc to compile GNOME. By using ISO C89, for which all UNIX vendors provide good compilers, it enables GNOME to be compiled and run on platforms without gcc.
3. C IS NO SILLIER THAN C++.
For a long time, C++ was just a preprocessor add-on (see AT&T's cfront C++ `compiler'), which took C++ source code and translated it into OO C. Anything you want to do in C++ you can do in C--maybe not as easily, but you certainly can do it.
... Now, you may read this as me slamming C++ for being baroque, convoluted, etc. I'm not. I don't think there's a good reason today to avoid C++ for OO work, given that gcc is so tantalizingly close to fully conformant. (Sun C++ is still ridiculously broken, as is MS VC++.) But if you want crossplatform, portable code which can be compiled under MS VC++, Sun's compiler tools, GCC and KAI and so on, your choices in languages are severely curtailed.
I still use ICEWM, because it's so damn small and still has function.
It's based on DCOP. It allows you to do this in Python (and other languages, of course)
" )
//g'`
/kdesktop HTTP/1.0
----
#!/usr/bin/python
from dcop import *
from qt import *
app = DCOPApplication( "kspread" )
table = app.default.getDocuments()[0].map().table("Table1
table.setSelection( QRect( 2, 2, 4, 6 ) )
rect = table.selection()
print rect
print "done"
----
or you can do this to control a presentation!
----
# Python version of David Faure's dcop presentation automation script for kpresenter
#
# Simon Hausmann
from time import sleep
from dcop import *
app = DCOPApplication( "kpresenter" )
doc = app.KoApplicationIface.getDocuments()[0]
view = doc.firstView()
startAction = view.action( "screen_start" )
print "Starting Presentation %s" % doc.url()
startAction.activate()
sleep( 5 )
act = view.action( "screen_next" )
while startAction.enabled() == 0:
sleep( 10 )
if startAction.enabled() == 0:
act.activate()
print "Presentation finished."
------
This stuff is also expose via xmlrpc. That means that you can access it from ANY language that can open a socket and send text through. Here's one in shell script:
-------
#!/bin/sh
port=`sed -e 's/,.*//' ~/.kxmlrpcd`
auth=`sed -e 's/.*,//' ~/.kxmlrpcd`
cat > cmd.xml
KDesktopIface.popupExecuteCommand
$auth
EOF
length=`wc -c cmd.xml | sed -e 's/cmd.xml//;s/
cat > head.xml EOF
POST
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-length: $length
EOF
( echo open localhost $port
sleep 1
cat head.xml cmd.xml
) | telnet -8E