Richard Stallman On KDE/GNOME Cooperation
Karma Sucks writes: "For the first time that I remember, RMS is encouraging collaboration between the GNOME and KDE projects. He offers a concrete idea: Unifying the themes between KDE and GNOME. Matthias Ettrich once went far enough to propose a default unified 'Linux' theme that both Qt and GTK+ could support."
I've never heard of it before. I would have posted themes.org as the link. But that's me. kde-look is a very nice website, but is there a GNOME equivalent?
Everything is mainstream now.
Why would you have stability problems running KDE apps in gnome, and vice-versa? They're only X-Apps - konsole, gimp, and the rest couldn't care less what window manager/desktop environment/file manager/web browser you're using.
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The main reason for the split, is the widget set dependence of GNOME and KDE. Until this issue is resolved, deeper interoperability issues won't likely be resolved.
You *should* be able to use Qt write a complete GNOME application that obeys GNOMEs theming rules, uses Bonobo, GConf and other GNOME technologies.
You *should* be able to use Gtk+ write a complete KDE application that obeys KDE's theming rules, uses KParts, DCOP and other KDE technologies.
Yes, it may be *easier* to write KDE applications with Qt, and GNOME applications with Gtk+, each desktop/platform shouldn't be *tied* to these widget sets.
That's not the way it works now. At the moment, I believe that GNOME's technologies (at least the one's in GNOME 2) are more decoupled from the widget set than KDE's. For instance, it's possible to write a Qt application that uses GConf2, Orbit2, GStreamer, and Bonobo2 without linking in any Gtk+. If you *really* work at it, you should also be able to integrate with GNOME's accessibility framework by hooking Qt components to the appropriate ATK+ options. That's a fair chunk of GNOME already. But there are many other GNOME features that Qt applications can't take advantage of.