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KDE 3.0 Release Plan Updated
loopkin noted that the dot is running a bit about the KDE 3 Release. Here's
the release schedule,
and as you can see, the upcoming weeks will be interesting. I guess
I should figure out why my truetype fonts all broke on a recent
update to debian unstable so that
I can actually enjoy the new releases :)
KDE 3.0 has plenty of new features. However, I think they should work on fixing up the Klipboard. That's one thing Windows has I wish KDE had... a good clipboard system. I also hope they don't screw up Konqueror with the Smart "window.open" Javascript policy. Right now, I love being able to turn off those X10 pop-ups.
The KDE release timing has absolutely nothing to do with Gnome. Take a look at the 3.0 release plan -- it's been like this since at least last September. In fact, I wish KDE had got 3.0 out sooner - it was originally supposed to just be a port of KDE 2.2 to Qt 3, but some new features have snuck in. These range from the productive (much faster html processing, better dcop architecture), to the useful (much improved javascript support), to the useful and pretty (better file selection dialog), to the pretty and useless (alpha blending / transparent menus), to the totally useless (animated mimetype icons).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
(win95,win98,winME,winXP - all bugfixes for win3.1)
Damn, you're a fucking moron.
Yeah, the AC is right - what the hell did they fix?? ;)
(the awesome power or the winking face should negate most of the flamebait effect)
sic transit gloria mundi
On area I think KDE really excels is with kioslaves, which allow *any* KDE application access 'files' by a wide variety of means.i ma p4*nntp*sftp*tar
*audiocd*samba*filesystem*ftp*gopher*gzip*http*
To list but afew in the CVS.
Plus people's homebrewed slaves:
*shell commands*Nomad Jukebox*Digital camera*deleted files*over ssh
for example.
This can give rise to many useful applicatons. All KDE graphics programs instantly able to grab pictures off digital camera. Ripping CD by just dragging icons in the file browser. Seemless network browsing, just like Network Neighbourhood in Windows (ok, takes abit of setting up to work properly).
Does gnome do anything similar. I know there is gnome-vfs, although haven't looked into what it does in too much detail.
Who cares, isnt this a little like my kid can beat up your kid ????
:)
People bitch about all the libs with gnome , and QT with KDE, The folks over at KDE have a good team a good direction and a good system. I am a gnome user for many reasons, BUT, I wish success to the KDE team, a good plan is always the best start, even if you dont follow it at least it gives you a sense that you have a common goal
We all in the *nix world of course know this not to be true, a common goal, Microsoft has one world domination, many of us *nix people are too worried about little things making it in, some out of ego some out of OUR neccesity.
the KDE team has done a great job all along, whats good for KDE is good for GNOME, if they do it first we can say, well that works nice, or that suck lets not do it that way,
Competition breeds the best, anything less is communism
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
One thing that I think really needs to improve with KDE is the speed. It is still much slower than Winblows if you ask me. But it's free, and very customizable, so I don't mind the trade-off.
(I sure hope they've fixed the fonts system now. Whenever I try to change the fonts to anything other than default, all my fonts turn into A.D. Mono.) CanadaDave
Xft fonts are broken with Qt 3 and certain combinations of XFree86... to solve this: remove the LD_BIND_NOW=true from in front of the kdeinit line in the file "startkde". There is a significant performance penalty though.
This is supposedly fixed in XFree86 4.2 but I am having problems getting it to work.
With the recent/upcoming releases of:
XFree 4.2.0
KDE 3.0
Gnome 2.0
glibc 2.2.5 (claimed compatible with GCC3)
GCC 3.0.x
2.4.x Kernel du jour
I sense upcoming releases of next-rev-level distros.
Now if it can only all be made to play nice together.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I care. There's a lot of things going on behind the scenes for Gnome 2. Gnome 2 is a major redesign. If you noticed, the sheer number of compound document/corba/etc architectures that appeared and died in the 1.0->1.2->1.4 cycle could only result in chaos.
Gnome 2 is a big, big clean-up and for the first time Gnome will provide a stable, mature and reliable development architecture. KDE has had this since KDE 2, and just like KDE took off in terms of application and accessory development since the KDE 2 release, Gnome app development will take off once Gnome 2 is out.
Let me explain: The major part of an environment like Gnome or KDE is not what is visible to the user, but the framework. Things like DCOP or KIO in KDE, orbit and bonobo in Gnome. If you want a pretty desktop with nifty features, all you have to do is write some applications which is minor work compared to designing and implementing an application interoperation framework. What was done for Gnome 1.4->2.0 was a complete framework rehaul. What was done in KDE 2.0->3.0 was mostly application development.
I do agree that Gnome 2 is late. They should have ditched 1.4 and gone for 2.0 immediately after the 1.2 release, as the user-visible changes were minor. IMO.
BTW, Gtk 2 offers more than just AA. It's also a completely new text rendering engine (Pango) that kicks the ass of everything else out there.
the increasing use of kioslaves as an underlying KDE technology is great -- even if KDE developers don't use the word, it sounds to me just like Apple's lately hyped vision of computer as "digital lifestyle hub" (or however they phrase it).
...
If the KDE stuff continues at current pace, it won't be lnog until anything with a USB or firewire jack (or any other port that my computer has or will sprout next year) should plug in and be recognized, transparently and as a regular-looking ("hey, there's a file!") entry in directories
Any typical Linux distro comes with superior art tools already (GIMP, Kontour -- superior to anything that comes as part of a Windows or Mac OS install per se, though Photoshop is good for certain things that GIMP Is not), and with lots of tools for converting and listening to digital music. So music and 2-D art I think are pretty much down -- not finished or perfect or static, but already a compelling arguments for the family who wants to create pictures, edit digital photos, and stream music to baby's room.
The big drawbacks now when it comes to the digital hub lifestyle thing to any free system I'm aware of is that both Windows and Apple have available superior codecs for video, and both now come with video editing software. (At least, that's what the silly XP commercials imply; is that true?).
This really isn't a GNOME or KDE thing per se (hey, both are good, differences are wildly exaggerated, and they both live happily on the same machines), but kioslaves are impressive and tantalizing -- just wish there were video apps so I could one day open a window called "FIREWIRE VIDEO CAMERA" and be able to do the things that iMovie on a Mac provides.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
For Audio and Video:
There is not yet a standard for Audio/Video.
There are some codecs available, some players, but they all follow their own rules.
Along with Gnome2 there will be a multimedia framework Gstreamer.
It is not really aimed at Gnome, it is meant to be able to build apps on it, so Kde could use it too.
There is discussion planned at Kde about how to deal with Multimedia. Somehow I hope they choose to build on Gstreamer, and support the building of one standard.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
But they really need to get over the Not-Invented-Here syndrome in so many places. One thing that stands out to me is that noatun is a crappy media player compared to other applications out there. Only video files I managed to get to play with it were MPG video files, and even then it crashed 8 times out of 10 (And this was KDE 2.2.2). In it they use mpeglib, which now works, but I wonder why they didn't use smpeg, which was more mature, from the start, was it simply because the lib was written by the author of kmpg, an older KDE media player? I wonder why they didn't have avifile support, that would be an easy way to play a *lot* more files. Compare noatun to, say, mplayer, which plays avi/asf, mpg, viv, rm (few), and mov, not to mention others. Within a couple of days using smpeg and avifile you can write a better media player than noatun...
.ogg files.. In modern systems there is no reason to use wav anymore, and .ogg gives the KDE team a nice, perfectly legal way of reducing filesize (unlike mp3, which probably would be better for this except for legal reasons, since ogg takes more CPU time to decode still)
On a positive note, it is good to see the widespread planned use of
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
How about:
While chasing Microsoft, let's not forget to stop and smell the alternative roses...
All about me
Although this might be a minor problem to many of you, I think it is essential for the first impression ...
... In addition to that you often have a gnome entry that has all the gnome menus, with again tons of entries.
What I mean is:
You have to clean up the KMenu. If you hit the K-Button in most distributions you get tons of applications, utilities etc
What about small arrows like Windo$ has, so that you see just the recently used? Or a small, medium, and regular menu?
I mean KDE is THE way to get people from other platforms to Linux. Why show them that "mess" with all these entries ?
Show them a clean menu and give them later the option to add / see more.
As a reply to the comment on broken TrueType fonts on new Debian versions, I'd like to say that this happens on many other distros. The new RedHat 7.2 exhibited the same lower TrueType rendering quality over 7.1 as the new Debian. This is due to three patents that Apple filed concerning interpretation of TrueType bytecodes that are used for hinting small size characters. The FreeType project introduced in a configuration header a directive to disable/enable the patented bytecode interpreter. It comes disabled by default. Turning it on and recompiling may be considered infringement of Apple's patents if you haven't licensed them.
Anyway, for those who can legally use it (ie. you don't live in the USA or have licensed Apple's patents), I've compiled FreeType with the patented bytecode interpreter enabled and made a RedHat 7.2 RPM which is available right here. This drastically improves the readability of antialiased fonts. Enjoy!
There are two clipboards called "Clipboard" and "Selection". When you select a block of text it is immediately copied into "Selection". When you click with the middle mouse button it inserts the current contents of "Selection". When you cut/copy it with a command (such as Ctrl+C) it is copied to "Clipboard" but that is unchanged otherwise, and pasting commands (such as Ctrl+V) paste the contents of "Clipboard".
This avoids confusing Windows users and still allows the drag&drop power of the older X selection and middle mouse click.
However older applications did not know anything about "Clipboard". Instead both selecting text and copy commands changed the value of "Selection", and both middle mouse click and paste commands pasted the contents of "Selection".
The result is that if you have program "New" and program "Old":
Selecting text and pasting (dropping) it with the middle mouse button works both ways between the programs.
If you "copy" in the New program, the Old program will not see it. Attempts to paste will get the last selection (this often is the same as the copied text but not always), the same as using the middle mouse.
If you "copy" in the Old program, if you try to "Paste" in the New program you will not get it, instead you will get the last "copy" from a New program. You need to click the middle mouse button to "paste". This is by far the most annoying incompatability.
Hopefully the "old" programs will vanish over time. I am trying to do my part...