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KDE & Gnome Usability Engineers Interviewed
Gentu writes "After the recent flamewar between the KDE and Gnome user camps, OSNews brings together the most influencial KDE and Gnome usability engineers to talk about how they will be able to overcome a number of obstacles in order to 'unify' KDE and Gnome in ways that could bring to the Unix desktop an easy to use, integrated and fully interoperated DE to better compete with the commercial alternatives. Waldo from SuSE and Havoc from Red Hat are taking part to the interview, and also Aaron, the head of KDE's usability."
Commercial alternatives? Which alternatives are we talking about, CDE? Or are we refering to Windows as a desktop environment?
There is no flamewar. There is no "war".
Users can use whatever they want, the two proejcts get along better than most to be honest.
THis whole fued thing has been overhyped by "news" sites since gnome was created and it's quite silly.
it's just a simple choice of DE, nothing more.
...I'm happy. Even Bluecurve sounded better ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Oh now Linux developers are actually trying to make a unified GUI standard? Its sure nice to see everyone moving to the right idea here, but I am sure people will still complain because it is all about 'choice'...
how come when i go to upgrade my kde, it tells me my redhat package manager is too old? when i go to install the 'new' one, it tells me my package manager is too old.
it may seem simple to you.
There's a relatively large thread going on in the kde-core-devel mailinglist about such interoperability efforts that you guys might be interested in, too... check out this thread for the whole story.
The short version is - arts, the KDE sound daemon, uses glib code internally, but the maintainer wanted to move the glib code to rely on an externally-installed glib (instead of maintaining a copy of glib in the arts distribution). Lots of developer confusion over this has ensued, but a lot of interesting discussion has also resulted. Check it out.
The one reason that people walk by a Linux system and immediately think it's arcane is typically the use of anti-aliased fonts. People feel much more comfortable learning systems that look pretty. After all, people never bought Windows because it was stable (not that I'm saying this is the only reason or anything, but it certainly helps ...).
In the long run, we're all dead.
If both parties can indeed merge to form a unified desktop environment, this could have a HUGE impact in the acceptance of Linux on the desktop. My biggest prob with Linux is trying to decide which GUI to standardize on. I feel a slight tremor in Seattle.
What I would like to see is not another technical feat, but an effort to bring the Linux desk top closer to the a-technical masses.
I've recently had the "pleasure" of reinstalling Red Hat Linux and neither Gnome nor KDE are user-friendly at all. Yes, they do copy the Windows 95 desk top, but no, that's not going to help my father. And don't even start about the built-in file/web/help/and-what-not browsers.
With all this high configurability that's available in both windowing systems, couldn't a group of more human-interface oriented people build a layman interface on top of either Gnome or KDE?
In general I found myself agreeing with Aaron
's comments more than the others. The main problem I see with Havoc and Waldo and all the others pushing for more shared technologies across the desktop is the implementation technology. KDE is built from the ground up upon Qt/C++ and this is one of the major reasons for it's considerable success. I see no reason to change this winning strategy.
Recently, we've been discussing the incorporation of Glib into KDE on the core development list. While I am not against this per se, I wonder whether the GNOME developers will ever allow the use of Qt/C++ in any shared technology. It seems to this day that Qt licensing is still a problem for GNOME. One of the greatest ironies in all of Free Software, IMHO.
If Havoc and Waldo are serious about integration then this problem will have to be addressed in earnest. I do not want to see KDE come down a level in technology just so that GNOME apps can integrate into KDE. Better to improve the great applications we currently have in KDE then waste so much time focusing on some elusive merging of these two.
Besides, choice is good and GNOME with KDE offer this. Where we can agree upon specs and closing superficial differences we should and that will help those who choose to use GNOME apps in KDE and vice versa. But please, let's not rearchitect KDE and strip it of Qt.
Seriously, I love the titles we're given these days. Currently I'm a Senior in a Computer Science program... but really, I think I should get a raise and the new title "Education Subscriber" or maybe "Learning Engineer".
Is this type of deal limited only to the Tech Sector, or is everybody throwing about hyphens and "Engineer" to make people sound more important?
Other good tack-on words I can think of would be associate (no, that's not the Fry Cook, that's our Comestibles Associate), analyst (hey, I'm not a waitress, I'm an Order Analyst), and vice president (no, I'm not the bus boy, I'm the VP of Table Maintenence).
-theGreater Cynic.
a unified look and feel to both Gnome and KDE will be great. I would even go further to suggest that someone should write a book in the lines of the M$ book of standards (its a book full of "thats how a window should look like" and "thats how a button should look like" etc.) for the linux environment.
I know this is sort of a blasphemy, after all - linux is about tweaking, but nevertheless its quite irritating to use middle mouse to paste in one program, ctrl-v in the other and shift-insert in the third , without any way of deciding or even a way to know in advance.
just my 2 cents...
Th reunification, from a user POV, should maybe not be the goal of G/K. Why ? Why have exactly the same features ? With the same political decisions ?
...) they agree on a same format, same interfaces, which is imho very very important.
I think that K and G do things their own way, but when G and K do the same thing (eg icons, desktop files,
Let's bring Apple and M$ together to unify OSX/Windows, see what we can come up with.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
I just installed Gentoo, to try out kde 3.1. Well, it is just great. The one problem was this. The FIRST option in Konqueror setting menu is Show Menubar. Click on it by accident (which is easy since it is the first option), and you are in lost world. It was ok for me, since I know how to tinker and find out that control+M turns tyhe menu back (still it was difficult), imagine the newbie hitting this setting. WTF..
Instead of getting usability "experts" together to moderate a supposed flamewar and make KDE and GNOME clones of each other and ultimately every other OS in existence, why don't they get these so called experts to suggest how these interfaces can be enhanced, in their own way, and *gasp* even contribute a few patches to the cause. Yeah, OSS has some pretty wretched interfaces but there is a great deal of innovation occuring as well and if someone with true experience in the realm of GUIs could harness and direct some of this innovation some amazing things could probably occur. The Mickeysoft way of doing things is not working for anyone over a 65 IQ and Apple is to artsy for many folks so there is a clear market to serve hear. I can even imagine many would think that KDE and GNOME *are* serving that market and with a little more time may really have some polished interfaces. Things *have* gotten better and they will continue to as time moves on. Development is an iterative process.
</rant>
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
...REASON joins the open source movement!!!
Choice is good, when limited. When allowed to run free, its actually a prison unto itself.
Too many GUI's, desktop environments, xfree86 shells, WHATEVER you wanna call them (see there's even too much choice on naming the damn things) and userbases get splintered along with their apps making Linux HARDER not EASIER to use.
A united GUI is the best chance Linux has for a respectable marketshare on the desktop.
And for all you "But you will RUIN my LEENUCKS if you make it easy to use, I like being counter-culture and unique!!!!!" and "Dammit. Choice is sacrosanct! I don't care if NO ONE can figure out how to use Linux, if it doesn't have 500,000 different ways of doing the same thing then it isn't worth installing! Can't you see? Linux is ALL about WASTEFUL and POINTLESS duplication of effort! Why go foward when you can spend eternity going nowhere!!?!?!" people relax. I am sure someone will create a new Linux distro, the "Ub3r L33t Linux Extra-Special Hard To Use" distro with a built in AI that will monitor your usage over time and re-arrainge various commands randomly to keep you on your toes and make sure Linux never becomes "too easy" for you. Legions of filthy unwashed nerds and geeks, dissilusioned by the increasingly easier to use mainstream distros will flock to this new permanently hard to use distro. They will form communities to provide each other with moral support. Real Estate firms will notice a skyrocketing in their sales and rentals of basement unit apartments/condos as the geeks settle in for a lifelong pursuit of sunlight shunning and the disdainment of anything easy or social. Although these geeks and nerds will think their intelligence is par none, they will miss all other technological advances and fall further and further behind the rest of society. When their savings finally runs out and they apply for computer jobs interviewers will be amazed that you've all spent the past 5 years using what will appear to the rest of the world as "DOS Linux". Laughed out of the interview the poor geeks will have to settle for flipping burgers at the local fast food restaurant for a short time until they are replaced by burger flipping robots. Finally realizing their worthlessness to society in general they will join an EverQuest cult where they will all live in massive communes cut off from the rest of the world and live peacefully until someone forgets to pay the EverQuest bill and they all jump off a bridge from mass depression.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
That is a work of sheer genius. One of the best rants I've read in a long time...
glib is great -- I'd love to see it universally available. If both KDE and GNOME used it as a standard base library...
May we never see th
Unfortunately, getting such a thing into KDE looks set to be next to impossible. A small but vocal minority appear to be dead-set against using even GObject, which only tackles a small subset of the problem of code sharing - the idea of using GObject seems to scare them witless.
I wouldn't normally name names, but it's starting to get very irritating. Neil Stevens and Zack Rusin in particular, (there are others) consistantly object whenver the possibility of using something based on GObject (even when wrapped in the KDE style) is brought up. I've yet to see them state what is wrong with GObject, beyond "it's not appropriate" or "KDE developers should only have to use Qt C++".
To be honest, this isn't the first time I wish KDE had gone with CORBA. Unfortunately, by dropping it before it matured, they blew a hole in the consistancy of the Linux desktop a mile wide, leaving their answer to "how do we get consistancy" to be "only use KDE apps".
Gnome wins!
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
I guess Red Hat's Bluecurve is a great method to get a single Linux Desktop with many tools and highly costumizable.
n0dez
==
www.n0dez.com
When you have zero need to ever touch a C api (i.e. almost all UNIX APIs) from your C++ program, then you have no use for glib. In the meantime, it's a tremendous timesaver. Again, it's a tiny general utility library, mostly useful for working with C strings. It tends to improve security immensely, since it discourages using things like statically sized strings.
Using it wouldn't cause Qt to be "replaced" in any way. It just helps Qt programmers whenever they're using something (SDL, OSS, the Unix system calls) that uses C strings. Glib is really nice -- stuff that (IMHO) probably should have been part of the standard library.
May we never see th
Talking of war, will Bill Gates and Dubya Bush be trying to "seek out and destroy the GUI desktops of mass Windows distruction" next?
:)
It's in their interests to protect Bill's way of life
When I look at areas where both Gnome and KDE can both improve, I see the basics. Things like printing. Things like sound setup. CDRW... DVD... improved .jpg and .tiff and other image management & manipulation.
I know the immediate, knee-jerk response is going to be that there are great programs out there which handle all of the things I listed above. The problem is they aren't as integrated into either Gnome or KDE as they SHOULD be. Whether we like it or not, the Microsoft Windows 2k & XP interface is the gold standard for how applications are integrated into the desktop.
What we should be thinking of is how we simplify the integration of applications into both KDE and Gnome desktops.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
9. Despite the advancements of RPM handling, apt-get from Debian and Gentoo's Portage, users are still not comfortable downloading applications and easily installing them. Either dependancy hell (RPM) when downloading apps from the web, bad interfaces for apt-get (Synaptic is not what I would call "niiice") while Gentoo itself is a nightmare to install for new users, makes the installation of... random Linux applications pretty impossible for new users.
And how is that a bad thing? No more shareware syndrome. Panic installing of random software is a sure fire way to hose your system. Experts know this, lusers don't.
Joe-sixpack windows (and mac) users are very prone to the shareware syndrome, _because_ it's do frigging easy to install random software. Although the uninstallation step on the newest Mac OS is a breeze (drag app into the garbage), under windows, the uninstallation can leave a lot of cruft behind.
Oh well, I'm just ranting. It's just something that caught my eye and couldn't help noticing.
Cause people.. regular people.. want to get there work done as quickly and efficiently as possible and lets face it.. the WIMP interface isn't going to go away anytime soon.
Throw a business person or newbie in front of Enlightenment (which is cool lookin') and they'll freak.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Ki Kdon't Ksee Kwhat Kall Kthe Kfuss Kis Kbout. Ki Knever Kreally Knotice Kit Kmuch.
Believe it or not, these three "experts" have never seriously touched XP.
As a UI designer, you should learn from all good/bad aspects of other UIs. Simply rejecting idea from Microsoft is never the wisest approach.
I don't mean Microsoft is any better, but it is foolish to act blind.
It died two years ago when TrollTech GPL'ed Qt. So yes, everyone has forgotten about it. Quite frankly, there's no need for it. Although as I understand it, someone has started a project to port the GPL'd version of QT from *nix to Windows (the Windows version of QT is under a "non-commercial" license), but this is something entirely different.
:Peter
"The new start menu is also an abomination. In fact, those two days with Windows XP reminded me why most people hate computers. I'd hate them too if that was all that was out there."
as a linux/freebsd user you would think i wouldn't, but i actually quite like the new start menu. i really like the fact that it adds shortcuts on the fly to your most recently used programs. i think it looks very elegant and it also simplifies a lot of tasks for people such as my mother (the usual metaphor!) in terms of its "My Recent Documents", "Connect To" etc...
my problem here with these guys statements is that they all, and in particular Aaron just makes these swooping opinionated statements without any meat to back them up.
i was also concerned that none of them have much experience with Windows XP. i would assume that apple looks at it all the time to not only imitate things it has done well, but to avoid things it does badly. surely these guys should be analysing osx and XP and doing the same thing?
Oh, and I forgot. Why don't you mention that GNOME developers are standing in the way of D-BUS and desktop interoperability?
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Aaron J. Seigo: ...
A desktop is useless unless it enables you to get your work done, therefore it should be our aim to provide people with as complete a solution set as defined by the general needs of the userbase (as oppose to, say, our personal opinion).
and don't say that his next sentence regarding people being REQUIRED to install it - as people could quite easily install Netscape on top of Windows...
God forbid anyone should disagree with the status quo on here because watch out, little 13 year old
jonny moderator will get all upset even though he hasn't a clue about the issues , and will mod your post down.
Go back to 1984 and throw a business person whose used to mainframe character based output in front
of a Mac and you'd probably get the same result. Thats no argument for not evolving something.
Perhaps we should still be using DOS boxes and ksh for doing everything?
And the WIMP interface will go precisely nowhere if everyone has the same "well , what else can we do with it" attitude.
I can't believe all the free software geeks on here truly believe that microsoft has got it so
spot on that the best they can do in response is just to copy them. Thats just pathetic.
But we already have a superb way of working with C strings - QCString. I don't see anything in GLib that is better (and I do see many things that are worse).
Rich.
rich@kde.org
Off topic rant follows:
What I can't figure out is why the hell
the default behavior to change window focus
is "click to change focus" instead of
"change focus when mouse enters window".
I guess because that's the way windows does it.
(And windows (without add-ons) cannot change this.
And, the active window *must* be on top! Drives
me nuts.)
But, anybody who's changed it so the focus
follows the mouse knows that this is a better
way. It's the first thing I do when I fire
up Gnome or KDE on a new linux system... change
the focus behavior.
But, why isn't "focus follows mouse"
the default? It's _so_ much better.
Try it for a while if you don't believe me.
(Of course Windows will then drive you even more
nuts than usual, once you're used to it.)
So we have two window managers, Gnome and KDE.
Shouldn't ONE of them have "focus follows mouse"
as the default policy?
"I don't need your civil war! It feeds the rich, while it buries the poor!"
Do you have any ideas? Is there a forum in which this kind of idea is discussed? I would like to see the UI totally abstracted away from the program, so that a program simply exports functionality, and the OS draws widgets in keeping with the platform's look and feel.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
But we already have a superb way of working with C strings - QCString. I don't see anything in GLib that is better (and I do see many things that are worse). Why should we switch?
Rich.
I find it highly disturbing that they don't use Windows every so often. I mean, come on, Microsoft spends TONS of cash on usability studies and 99% of the world knows Windows.
I don't want an XP clone (although the thought is not that bad) but if you are creating a new UI, XP should be required study. Both for it's good AND bad points.
They should also use OSX, MacOS9, Be, and any other OS worth mentioning on a regular basis. XP is not the be-all-end-all.
Unix is the ONLY OS without a standard GUI.
IMHO, the KDE vs. GNOME battle hurts Linux on the desktop more than it helps. Great, we have choices. But really, if there was a LINUX GUI, not two half-assed UI's, we could be much further along on our way to a really good UI. Red Hat 8.0 is the only distro to "get" this and they were crucified for trying it.
1. The best code from each would have been used and the worst would have been dropped.
2. There would be twice as many developers.
3. Users would not have to choose their problems.
4. Tech support would be possible.
5. Graphical tools could be made for system configuration and packaging if they did not have to support a multitude of OS's.
Too many options is good for a technical individual, too many options is NOT a good thing for a group. If they can't get together, I hope they both fail or lose mindshare. The Linux community would be better off with it's own standard GUI.
It's not the packaging, the number of distro's or X Windows holding Linux back as I hear so often. It's the desktop. The other problems can be solved with a standard GUI.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, almost 95% of what Glib does is already handled by Qt (and in some places, in a more natural manner, such as QObject vs. GObject)
Qt provides the same easy ways to use C strings as glib does.
Anyways, aRts uses glib because it wants to be somewhat desktop agnostic. GNOME would probably never want to depend on Qt (it's GPL'd, not LGPL'd)
Anyways, either way you look at it, depending glib on kde causes perhaps unnecessary dependancy bloat, and depending qt on gnome would do the same thing.
HOWEVER, I think that glib and Qt are both widespead enough that it doesn't really matter.
KDE and Gnome: racing to mediocraty. Which project will get there first?
Gnome and KDE both promissed to make the *nix destop more useable with exciting easy to use new features. But instead of useability we just have prettier versions of the same old. Judgeing from the responses in the article neither project is really interested in useability.
Instead of modding this comment, and its parent down, reply and prove us wrong.
I have some ideas but they're generally not that good compared to ideas I've seen from other people
one being a circular tree type structure denoting a file system which could be drilled down into.
Unfortunately I've long since lost the link but I'm sure its around on google somewhere.
"Whether we like it or not, the Microsoft Windows 2k & XP interface is the gold standard for how applications are integrated into the desktop."
Apple would disagree with you, but then everyone sees the solution they know as the correct one.
MS did a lot of work on this. Maybe a lot of the results are distasteful - but that doesn't mean one should hide one's head in the sand. There may be some good things and some bad things, but choices can be made more intelligently when there is a broad base of knowledge to draw upon.
(Same comments for Mac UI of course...)
Each has a clear design quality that the other could use.
- KDE: Elegant API
- GNOME: Good component model
Each has a design flaw that still needs to be overcome.So, when it comes to flamewars, why is it always the KDE guys who do most of the bitching? Why are there so many articles about why GNOME sucks? Why do KDE guys tend to shout? ;-) Why do the KDE guys seem like Bolsheviks, and the GNOME guys seem like Mensheviks?
My poor theory, which is almost certainly off the mark, is that since GNOME has garnered some corporate attention, there is no longer a single face (besides Miguel de Icaza) on the project; it has become very much an amorphous enterprise. The KDE project, having been spared this attention, still has an individual character, and still takes things very personally.
--I only got one serious beef with the various distros I've tried. I want ALL the apps installed on the machine to show up in the GUI menu system. I don't care if it's a little dragon or a little fat guys foot, when I click on that thing down in the corner I want the menu to be complete. I got stuff on here I don't even know what I got. No idea where it even is. That was my first impression of Linux, I KNEW I had a lot more apps then what showed up.
The only other useability beef is dialout, I had dismal luck at first getting a normal over the old fashioned telephone wires internet connection, MAN that was annoying. I have yet to get kppp on mandrake to work,but I did get redhats dialer and front end to work in the 7 series, and not even gonna attempt to do it with "tweaking files" ever, ME tweaking files is an invitation to mass FUBAR, this is just *so true* it ain't funny. I love that that option is there, sometimes I fool with it, but NOT with my inet connection, that's the primary reason I own a computer.
Besides that, it's a pretty nifty system, if the developers can integrate, more power to them! I'd love to see it. The concepts for GUI are fairly easy, you have to be able to look at what's there, and it should make sense and do what it's told. If it can't, then it won't get used or people will get frustrated. GUI it appears can be made more complex, but then you have to ask "why do that?"
An amazing solution to this problem can be found in the Xandros distribution. The engineers took stock KDE, put it through a QA cycle with fixes and enhancements, then spent a lot of time going through and integrating it to the underlying OS. The result is that, in combination with Xandros' broad hardware detection, you can insert a flash memory stick into the USB and, bam!, it appears in the file manager.
It's truly pretty incredible and you really cannot see it implemented anywere but in Xandros (ok and XP, MacOSX, etc). Furthermore, the configuration tools all neatly handle the different users setting, super user vs regular user permissions, etc.
This is a fundamental shortcoming of KDE and Gnome, but not necessarily one that should go away. This tight integration requires an extensive amount of work. Furthermore, much of the work would have to be redone for each distribution. As a result, the Gnome programmers don't have the time to make this integration for each distribution and they shouldn't.
This is one reason why Red Hat's desktop will never be a good option in corporations. Red Hat is a server company that nominally offers a desktop solution, but they do not even begin to understand these issues.
Hunger is the best sauce.
I tried not to reply, but I hate to be told what I think. Especially when it is wrong.
No, I don't think that Linux is a corporation with one goal. However, I do believe that a lack of focus is a weakness.
The kernel is progressing well with one team leader, but then we don't have two to choose from with totally different api's. (Unless you want to count BSD)
How about those distros that actually WANT to get Linux on the desktop get together and decide on one DE like the one filesystem layout? (etc is always etc) This would improve matters and the "build a server from scratch" guys could do whatever they want. It isn't like those who want to can't add any DE to any distro anyway.
But guess what DE would most likely be chosen? Probably the slightly behind the usability curve GNOME.
When I last checked, the cost for writing even a $5 shareware closed source app in KDE/QT was a minimum of $1500. That is a steep cost to get commercial apps on your OS and without some commercial apps the OS isn't going to make it.
I'm not dictating to anyone, but I, like many others, want Linux on alot of desktops with a great GUI. I want to shed off the duplicate functionality KDE or GNOME libs and still have plenty of good apps to choose from. I want apps, both OSS and commercial, to be widely available.
Until there is more uniformity it isn't going to happen.
You can code whatever you want, but I don't have to use it.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
All other arguments aside, there's the often overlooked, yet significant, issue of platform consistency. Aaron commented that DEs have a real chance to standardize, or make consistent, the user interface for users, and that he is baffled by distribution's tendancy to change the default behavior of DEs. This is an important point.
I can go from my Gentoo laptop, to my Wife's Mandrake laptop, to my office Redhat desktop; all are running the same major revision of KDE, and I have to search through the menus every time to find the same core KDE applications, because distributions re-organize the default menus. Gentoo uses the default KDE menu layout; Redhat rearranges the menus, and Mandrake has their own truely bizarre layout.
This is more serious than simple look-and-feel changes. L&F can be easily configured, it sticks through upgrades, and in most cases only has minor impact on usability. However, the distributions changing the location of applications in the menus is just plain stupid, and lends a lot to the perception that Linux is difficult to use.
Those pieces of shit actually have "Usability Engineers" ?
In other news, next week Slashdot will post interviews with English automotive engineers, North Korean economists and a French military strategist.
I think a lot of people are dropping the ball when it comes to the GUI. The best thing for linux (And any OS in general) is to make sure it looks pretty and is consistant between ever application you'd run in the environment. The best example of this would be Apple and their never ending quest to have the prettiest OS around. While there can be debate over how it looks, feels and what it runs on, ALL of the applications in ALL of the OSs are to follow the user interface guidlines. It makes it easy for the application developer and it also sets standards for the Interface devloper.
While I know at this point I seem like a babbling fool, but I need to take a stab at KDE/GNOME developers. I constantly go between Windows, Mac OS 9, OS X and KDE. Out of all of them, KDE is the most annoying, god awful piece of crap. It has some good features, but it doesn't have things that are well thought out, like placement of options, Initial "Pretty Look." If the ultimate goal of anyone is to get Linux on to the Desktop Market, they really, really REALLY need stop, take a deep breath and think about what people buing eMachine with Windows ME really want from their computer.
Why let them know you're talking? They're more likley to beat you up that way.
I can't help but feel that the looks of the developers reflect the looks of their respective DE:s. :-)
The problem is that when one little monkey has an infectious problem, BANG! Everything plugged into it blows up.
Hunger is the best sauce.
A small but vocal minority appear to be dead-set against using even GObject, which only tackles a small subset of the problem of code sharing - the idea of using GObject seems to scare them witless. I wouldn't normally name names, but it's starting to get very irritating. Neil Stevens and Zack Rusin in particular, (there are others) consistantly object whenver the possibility of using something based on GObject (even when wrapped in the KDE style) is brought up.
Can you give a link to this discussion? I've searched the mail archives at lists.kde.org but I can't find any mails from Zach Rusin discussing the GObject issue.
Also, it doesn't seem fair to bitch in Slashdot about people because they don't support the path you would like for KDE. If you have technical arguments for your position, present them in the appropriate mailing list. If you don't, name-calling is not the solution.
In other messages you've admitted you don't even know C++, so your experience in KDE development must be inevitably small. These people probably know quite a lot more than you about KDE's internal workings, so why not show a little respect for their position.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
If you look at the history of the movements, it is actually the Gnome people that got into the game late to create a direct opposition to KDE. Gnome was created to be an opposition to KDE. KDE was created to provide a desktop with great usability, solid features, etc.
Why are there so many articles about why GNOME sucks?
If you actually go through and read the articles, you'll see why. Gnome got into the game late, is unstable, is pretty at the expense of being usable by mainstream users, etc. etc. etc. Read the articles, Gnome doesn't suck, but KDE is clearly superior.
The KDE project, having been spared this attention, still has an individual character, and still takes things very personally.
You obviously seem to be operating off a biased perception about this.
A) KDE is clearly the leader on the desktop with 75% of the worldwide market (to Gnomes 20%)
B) KDE has significantly more corporate, government traction and with the exception of (obviously biased Ximian) is the desktop of choice by the desktop focused distributions: Xandros, Lycoris, etc.
C) It has always been the Gnome gang that has gone on mercenary flaming raids in futile attempts to smear the KDE development.
I honestly don't think most of the people in the KDE camp care that much about inaccuracies like the one in your article, but for those not familiar with history, you should get your facts straight.
Hunger is the best sauce.
Rich, what would be your approach if you had, say, three C strings returned by various UNIX library functions and an integer, and you wanted to do a formatted print to another C string to pass to something like chown()?
You can pull something like this off (with a bit extra code) using the STL, but I don't see a nice way to do it with QCString. I suppose I could be missing something. I'd use this if I had glib handy:
char * new_str = g_strdup_vprintf("%s/%s,%s(%d)", foo, bar, baz, number);
chown(new_str, own, group);
g_free(new_str);
There's probably a way to pull it off, but glib is particularly useful when working with C strings, which just happens because of all the libraries and system calls that are C.
And no one (that I can see) is advocating replacing Qt with glib -- just using it as another handy utility. I don't see gtk or gdk becoming used in KDE, but glib seems quite useful. It fits well with C++ -- I was recently writing a (non gdk/gtk) piece of software and used it for a number of string operations that I needed done.
May we never see th
However, almost 95% of what Glib does is already handled by Qt (and in some places, in a more natural manner, such as QObject vs. GObject)
Huh. I haven't even seen GObject -- I've only used glib 1, not glib 2. I guess I should see what's up. Some of the things are the same. I'm pretty sure that both have some sort of API for creating timers, for example.
Qt provides the same easy ways to use C strings as glib does.
No, I don't think it's quite as nice -- if you'll take a look at some of my other posts in this thread, you'll see me talkign about them.
GNOME would probably never want to depend on Qt (it's GPL'd, not LGPL'd)
I always wondered about that. How do the KDE and TrollTech people get along when it comes to licenses? kdelibs is LGPL and is definitely dynamically linked to qt, which is GPL.
depending qt on gnome would do the same thing.
I think that would be worse. Glib is a very small, basic set of utility code that gdk/gtk use. You'd have to combine all three of them to have something equivalent to Qt, so GNOME depending on Qt would be a much larger set of dependencies. KDE can comfortably use lots of glib code without having to adopt a new object model, but GNOME doing the same with Qt would not hold true. Plus you'd be introducing a C++ requirement into GNOME, plus there's the license issue, yadda, yadda, yadda.
May we never see th
One problem with using GObject or any Gnome-centric stuff with KDE is that it might break some of KDE's cross-platform compatibility. KDE is not just for Linux -- it's even supposed to work with Win32, which Gnome is not. These two desktops seem more popular on one platform or the other -- I've seen KDE on almost every BSD box, but never Gnome, and I've seen Gnome on other 'nixes, but not KDE. The original idea of KDE and QT was a cross-platform desktop and GUI toolkit alternative to Win32. So it's understandable if there's a bias by KDE honchos to stay on course with this.
I'd never say Linux looks ugly. I personally think that Linux Desktops nowadays beat Windows (especially XP) Desktops downright when it comes to looks.
;-)
Just check out Dropline-Gnome (with tranparent,shadowed Cursors) or Fluxbox. No competition here. Although i must admit that OS-X still looks a little bit sexier. But is there anything cooler than a real high-res FB-Console?
cu,
Lispy
> Plus you'd be introducing a C++ requirement into GNOME
so? libfam is already C++, and epiphany is also (from what I've heard, it might be in gnome soon),
your first post suggests that GObject is somehow flawed because the C++ object system is better, vidarh gave good examples of how this isnt so. your reply here then switches to talking about API documentation. how about addressing the actual discussin at hand instead of tyring to distract?
furthermore, i'm not sure how projects like arts wrap gtk+, but you can very simply have it your way with a C++ wrapper for gtk+ like gtk-- as in:
Gtk::Button* pButton = new Gtk::Button("Test");
the *point* of bonobo is that is doesnt matter what language the object was written with in order to embed it in your apps. if you are going to attempt to discuss a technologies merrits at least school yourself in the basics of said technology. otherwise your are just spreading misinformations (aka FUD).
so? libfam is already C++,
Huh, you're right. Didn't even know that.
The point about the APIs not making much sense still stands, though. There's no particularly clean way to use Qt in GNOME without major restructuring. If Qt broke off a library that contained some basic functionality that didn't depend on using Qt data structures throughout (which is what glib is, at least as far as I use it), I could see it as more reasonable.
glib isn't part of the gtk framework, though it contains handy code. gtk and Qt are both part of app frameworks, and combining the two wouldn't work that well.
I could see it being doable if Qt were to break out a "foundational" library, much like the gtk guys did with glib, though.
May we never see th
chown( QString::sprintf(%s/%s,%s(%d)", foo, bar, baz, number).local8bit(), own, group );
Unix has a standard GUI called CDE. I use it on my Alpha. I must admit that CDE is quite old and it isn't the most beautiful desktop around but I think it works quite well.
Some of the good features of CDE are:
1. FrontPanel offers fast access to applications.
2. Application Manager is much better way to start programs than start-menu (and its clones).
3. Filemanager is a good basic filemanager without too much bloat. I don't want my filemanager to view images or web pages, play music etc. These features can be useful to many people, but I simply don't need them.
4. CDE is based on Motif which is the standard Unix widget set.
You mean something like this?
They put the K there so that you know that it is an app. written for KDE and that it will work best and look best in KDE and not Gnome. Same thing with Gnome, they have a ton of programs that start with G. It doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I want someone to port Gaim to KDE (port isn't a good word, oh well you know what I mean) to KDE. It's a scary thought that I would love to use a program called KGaim.