Slashdot Mirror
gDesklets - Gnome2's Karamba
Deusy writes "Footnotes is running an update article on gDesklets, Gnome's answer to KDE's Karamba. I've heard a lot of noise with regards to Karamba (and Super Karamba) and a lot of moans from Gnome users about the lack of a Gnome equivalent. Hopefully this should fill that void and more, as one of the developers comments that gDesklets is the product of "months of planning" and describes Karamba as an "ugly hack"."
gDesklets provides an advanced architecture for desktop applets - tiny displays sitting on your desktop in a symbiotic relationship of eye candy and usefulness.
Populate your desktop with status meters, icon bars, weather sensors, news tickers... whatever you can imagine! Virtually anything is possible and maybe even available some day.
The system consists of three parts: the gDesklets core (a daemon running in the background), the Sensors (providing data and processing user actions), and the Displays (what you will see on the screen).
New Displays can be put together by simply composing widgets and Sensors in a XML file. Advanced users may also create new Sensors easily.
As of now, Sensors are restricted to Python modules, but we are planning to extend this to scripting languages like Perl and Ruby, and to C as well.
You can get gDesklets from: www.pycage.de/software_gdesklets.html
Have fun!
Martin Grimme
Christian Meyer
Jesse Andrews
Actually, most people use KDE. I use GNOME. he biggest diference is that KDE is more customizable and heavier (bloated), while Gnome is lighter and more user friendly. Well, this is my opinion, of course.
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
Try konfabulator which does the same for Apples. I've bought it and love the way I have so much eye candy on the screen that I end up only using about two thirds for productive work!
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
Since version 2.0, the default GNOME window manager is metacity. For more information I suggest you visit www.gnome.org instead of asking really basic questions on /.
A developer calls it "an ugly hack". Well, not quite. It was pretty clearly marked as tongue-in-cheek, and not to be taken seriously.
Looks to me like the submitter deliberately wants to fan any remaining flames between the projects; who knows why.
Instead, we have some pretty good illustrations as to why having two projects is a really good idea. KDE gets Karamba (and SuperKaramba) which takes off like wildfire. Undaunted, some Gnome people sit down and look at what Karamba does and learns from it (what the devels envisioned versus how it is actually being used; awkwardness and mistakes in teh design) and develop something similar, but with the benefir of hindsight from the other project. No doubt will the Karamba people look at gDesklets and in turn learn from it's strengths and weaknesses. THe end result is a set of tools that become far better, faster, than either would have become on its own.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Good to know Gnome is going to have something along the same line as KDE. Having said that however, I'm wondering if the Gnome community can match the number of Karamba plug-ins out there, some of which really do look good (www.kde-look.org) Also, before slamming Karamba for being "an ugly hack", I'd love for them to explain A.) Why they think this is so and B.) Why their version is going to be so much better. I mean, a good explanation might go a long way in converting people over who use KDE just for Karamba (and they are out there).
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
For something being touted as eye candy for the desktop, there's amazingly few screenshots available in the links provided.
Have EVDO, will travel.
I guess smarter developer would have ported karamba to gnome. I've had enough of this duplication of every goddamn app in world for both of the systems. What's the use of making everything twice? Waste of talented programming resources, IMHO.
... and call it iKaramba.
[Tumbleweed rolls past]
I'll see myself out ...
Ugly yes, but its not really a hack...
Except for considering konqueror any better than Nautilus - it just sucks in different ways. And while the lack of table support of Abiword is a bind at least it works unlike Kword.
However for those of us that like a GTK desktop the way to go is XFce4
$ tar xjf gdesklets.tar.gz ./configure --prefix=/opt/gnome2/ /doc/html/index.sgml
$ cd gdesklets-0.1
$
Bach blah...
$ make
blah blah...
$ make install
blah blah
Error :
No such file or directory
Help! I cant rtfm because this IS the FM!
These look strangely like BeOS replicants. Small programs that can sit on a desktop. Only the BeOS versions could "front" as monitors for larger programs and pass information between eachother without extra programming.
If the wishes of desktop users are the same, KDE and GNOME will keep on copying from each other forever.
How likely is it for one idea to never appear in the other project?
Reminds me of the transparent menu hack GNOME recently got a story on /. about and which in the KDE version always was flamed before as bloat and not good because it's not done the X server. Where are the flames now that GTK got it too?
I notice python is the scripting language for Karamba events and it looks like gDoclets is written in it.
Cool
Here are just some examples of the things that can be done:
Display system information such as CPU Usage, MP3 playing, etc.
Create cool custom toolbars that work any way imaginable
Create little games or virtual pets that live on your desktop
Display information from the internet, such as weather and headlines
The possibilities really are endless!
In other words, more proprietary gui and more useless stuff on the desktop. I am not trolling, but why would anybody want little games or virtual pets on his/her desktop ? or display the weather or/and headlines ? it is just cosmetics, i.e. they don't do anything useful. And since Linux has so little desktop usage, I can't see how useful is this for the majority of the Linux users.
Personally, when I work, I don't like to be destructed by anything that moves on the computer screen but it is out of my focus. Maybe it's just me.
This usually means that you have no write access in the directory the install script wants to write in.
But it's not true at all.
Look at GNOME 2 vs. KDE 3.1. They are almost entirely DIFFERENT. KDE still follows the path it has always followed--a beefier CDE with Windows trappings. GNOME, which used to follow this model, has completely changed--it's more like the Mac now rather then playing catch-up with KDE or imitating Windows.
I used to be unimpressed with GNOME. I recently installed GNOME 2 and was blown away--very slick, very minimalist, very tight. And very different from the current KDE. I stopped using Windowmaker as a result.
The two projects may have started out trying to mimic each other, but it's not true now. They are going in two different directions, and it shows.
The patch was never accepted upstream, so GTK does not have any transparency menu hacks.
still reading?
I've been waiting long for something to equal the power of the command line + Unix philosophy in a graphical environment. I think this technology has that power. I think we soon will see a set of graphic small tools which do one thing, and do it well.
Why "classic" frameworks as Gnome and KDE failed to provide this tools? Well, they follow the "component model", which basically means that there are BIG modular reusable tools intended to have everything but the kitchen sink. Those components are great to assemble stand alone applications, because they provide a great chunk of related functionallity. But that's not the Unix way.
The Unix way is to have small and versatile commands, to know what they do and to combine them in new ways to solve problems as they appear. I think most GNU hackers (and some intermediate users) benefit from that approach, and I think that a text command line is not a requirement for that.
You only need a common API to communicate those small tools, something that Unix carry out with pipes. But now we have two new environments, Karamba and gDesklets, which could be the base for a graphic API. I believe it's time to move from the Command Line Interface to the Command Graphical User Interface.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
A prime example of how the Open Source community wastes resources by re-inventing the wheel again and again and again.
This is the lamest argument I have ever come across.. Is there only one commersial operating system? Only one commersial webserver? Only one commersial database. Only one commersial instant messenger?
For fuck sake.. This has nothing to do with open source Mr. troll.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything about them using a
proprietary format. GNOME is committed to being free and open,
so I would find this a little surprising if it were true.
*sigh* back to work...
As Ron Minnich said
"You want to make your way in the CS field? Simple. Calculate rough time of
amnesia (hell, 10 years is plenty, probably 10 months is plenty), go to
the dusty archives, dig out something fun, and go for it.
It's worked for many people, and it can work for you."
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
> Gnome dosent let you change the colour scheme of the widgets.
; s e();
gtk_widget_modify_bg();
gtk_widget_modify_fg()
gtk_widget_modify_text();
gtk_widget_modify_ba
'nuff said.
Really, was it really necessary to mention that "karamba is an ugly hack" comment? The project's homepage is very objective and doesn't slam KDE at all. That comment was the opinion of one single person!
Why was it mentioned? Are you trying to slam KDE again? Or are you trying to make it look like as if the GNOME guys are slamming KDE, and start yet another flamewar on Slashdot?
I'm sure I will get modded down for this, but hell, it's the truth! Slashdot should not encourage more pointless desktop flamewars or trying to make either GNOME or KDE look bad.
Obligatory mention of gkrellm ... www.gkrellm.net. IMHO, its smaller, more lightweight... can be extended with hundreds of plugins and doesn't clutter the desktop. I think it's been around a bit longer too, but I could be wrong.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
What differentiates Gnome from KDE except some sort of fuzzy ideology?
BOO! TERRO
Ok, so gDesklets is a clone of Karamba that is a clone of Konfabulator that is a clone of the old hack Andy Hertzfeldt and Arlo worked on in Nautilus. Nice so see how things work in circles ;)
"Also, before slamming Karamba for being "an ugly hack", I'd love for them to explain A.) Why they think this is so and B.) Why their version is going to be so much better."
There is no "they". There is only "he". This is the comment of one individual, not the entire project.
Slashdot is just trying to start another flamewar. This whole story could be considered a troll just because it mentions that single comment.
http://www.novell.com/linux/
Which is badly 'taken from beos which is taken from next which is.... Anyways the difference from these(beos replicants..) to active desktop is that unlike a.D they're usable..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
As opposed to how the Windows community wastes resources by re-inventing the wheel again and again and again?
Or how hardware manufactures waste resources by re-inventing harddrives again and again or again?
Or how you waste resources by writing redundant posts instead of helping GNOME and KDE unite their source code?
People like you just don't get it.
- The programming language. C developers prefer GNOME, C++ developers prefer KDE or the GNOME C++ bindings.
- User interface design philosophy. GNOME aims for "keep it simple and stupid" and "everything must have good defaults", KDE aims for "power to the user" and "lots of configuration options".
This is a *huge* difference, since both projects target a different group of users.
Your post clearly shows that you're ignorant.
Yes oh my god.. they run this on a PRODUCTION server... you're right, this is very foolish... everyone knows s represent an enormous security vulnerability on whatever server you put it...
And yeah, since there's an iframe, that totally means OpenSource software is not reliable...
Proprietary? What the fuck are yuo talking about?
Do you know the meaning of the term proprietary?
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Dashboard is something that has a real potential to be cool, eye-candy-compliant AND useful - it would be REALLY kewl to search for 'heat' and comes your computer's temperature :) /me needs to be less lazy and recompile all that Mono stuff...
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
I think what was meant is something like KDE's dialogue to configure the colours of the current widget theme, not from program code. GTK/GNOME don't have one of these yet (which is a shame).
Miri it is whil Linux ilast...
I am a GNOME user, but I do not think GNOME is "superior" to KDE. It's just different, not inferior.
As for QT: it's duelicensed GPL/QPL. The GPL is a Free Software/Open Source license.
Really, the fact that so many people think bad of the GNOME community is because of people like you who mindlessly flame down KDE. You're not helping the GNOME community, you're just making us look bad.
Quote: "Footnotes is running an update article on gDesklets, Gnome's answer to KDE's Karamba."
What's the point of summarizing a story, if - by the end of the summary - the reader still has no clue as to what it's even about.
What the hell is Karamba, and why should people care enough to click-through?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
You didn't bother looking into the packages they distribute, did you? Their .display files are XML.
--
I refuse to use
... and call it iKaramba. ...
[Tumbleweed rolls past]
I'll see myself out
I believe I had a hat!
[ hat is thrown into the street ]
He he. SUCKERS!
[ runs off with hat ]
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
So this is kind of like Konfabulator?
mbbac
Perhaps not in eye-candy, but in usability, hell yes. I find Gnome totally unusable and unconfigurable. Bloody hell, I can't even line up my icons on the desktop to a grid... WTF are you playing at Gnome guys, get your fingers out and make it better. Until then, I'm sticking with Fluxbox.
The default GNOME Window Manager is Metacity, however, the ability is there, if the user wishes, to swap it for another one as so long as it is "GNOME compliant".
Regarding KDE, KDE has kwin, and IIRC, you can not replace it with a window manager of your choice, hence, when one compiles KDE from scratch, the window manager is embedded right into the desktop code.
Whether that is good or bad, I'll let the zealots from both sides of the spectrum take up that argument.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
If you're using KDE and GNOME on some unoptimized system (such as, say, Debian or a from-scratch system) GNOME is more responsive than KDE.
At the risk of starting a flamewar (and keep in mind that I'm a KDE user) GNOME is more user-friendly, IMHO, than KDE. KDE has a nice set of defaults and allows an extreme (some say excessive) level of configurability. GNOME is, well, GNOME. Sometimes it reminds me of MacOS 9. The only thing I miss by not using GNOME, though, is the ability to zoom on images with my scrollwheel. That's it.
Use whatever works for you. Heck, if TWM and a couple of xterms works for you, use it.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
It gives me joy like when I figured out I could drag applications out of their windows in BeOS.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
why not.
Reading flamewars is alot of fun.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Touch ./path
make install
for some reason, every package in gnome complains that index.sgml doesn't exist.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us...So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use.
It's surprising that you're company was surprised that others find having access to source code as appealing as your company does.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Pretty shiny things to clutter your desktop, though? That's just evil. There's no there there. It's just pretty graphics pretending to be useful!
Am I totally missing the point, or am I spot-on?
I tried to like Karamba when it came about; I was never able to find a good use for it, though. About the best use anyone ever came up with was as a half-assed OSX-style Dock. Weather applets? Stuck to my desktop? Until I stop using my computer for anything other than staring at my desktop, no thanks.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Not that it's not a good language, but isn't Guile the official scripting language?
....argh!!
The extra dependencies
Get a clue. XML comes in flat text files. You don't need a front-end or GUI to edit them.
That's not the point. A custom format tailored to a particular program is always going to be better. XML is supposed to be a standard. It's supposed to make things simpler for people by having a standard way of configuring programs.
Time makes more converts than reason
I found that locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/ contained a file called *.mo, i copied this to gdesklets.mo and it installed, not sure why it is trying to install german on my machine.
Unfortunatley it still does not run becuase it can't find gconf, probably because i'm running Ximian2. Oh well, maybe next release.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The "utility check". It's a close cousin of the reality check. Let's do one. I honestly have no idea what a gDesklet or a Karamba is. What does it do? Will it help me do word-processing, development, web-browsing, or email any faster or more securely?
If not, it fails my personal utility check.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm glad the good old days are gone, where in order to get a decent level of functionality with an OS such as windows 3.1, I had to get winzip, winrar vueprint, etc.
Ok, one site being in the news for GNOME related activities and linked from GNOME news website recently. Not very complimentary 4% lead for such case.
I find Gnome totally unusable and unconfigurable.
And I find KDE a disgusting mess that slows down my AMD 2000+ to seem like a Pentium II 350. Until KDE can perform, I'm a satisfied Gnome user. KDE is bloated and very annoying. If I wanted bloat, I'd use Mac OS.
-Scott
Of course surveys don't ask every user. You missed to say why you think that those 600 are not representative. Also you fail to see that KDE sees massive absolute growth too.
So basically they're all just knock-offs of Konfabulator...
Here is a Gnome desktop widget that is actually quite a bit more interesting: Dashboard, software that gets fed "clues" from other applications, and searches some databases for related information.
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
You seem to be in the dark about the meaning of "propietary".
Another point is why should XML be better than what they're using now.
If you pointed me at Karamba's home page I wouldn't have a clue what it was. "information using various sensors and display types" could mean pretty much anything. gDesklets mentions status meters and news tickers so you know WTF it is.
Simple really.
I think XML is overhyped. I'd like to see some other plain text data formats get standized so
.ini format:
they can have official ISO/ANSI/etc approval.
Maybe some kind of extended
[section]
var=val
The extended part would define a way for
subsections or arrays of variables
[section]
[subsection]
var=val
And, of course, the old BIND or C style:
Something
{
stuff
}
It would be great to see libraries for both
these in Gnome and KDE.
Yesterday we went to the supermarket and found
the shelves full of lovely goods. Indeed, we
were allowed freely to browse the rows and rows
of delectable consumer goods, and we soon made
ourselves busy by opening various packages and
eating what we wanted, as well as filling our
pockets and bags with the many beautiful things.
I have to admit it was a wonderful fifty
minutes. Imagine our surprise, therefore, when
at the exit we were rudely stopped by a security
guard and asked to pay for the goods we
had consumed. There was no reason for this, and
we were very angry. Needless to say, I will not
be going back to this shop, and I encourage all
of you to boycott this thing we call "capitalism"
most strongly. The very idea that one person can
somehow restrict the rights of others to come in
and eat his food, drink his soda, and chew on his
liquorice sticks is an affront to all civilized
society. I am now returning to North Korea where
people have a more decent view on such matters.
Thank you for your time.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The parent is an absolute troll... but ok, I'll bite.
7) The half assed way of changing screen resolutions. The Xrandr hack is useless if you want to change colour depth.
This is an XFree86 issue, no?
5) Nautilus, half asssed file management with no "real" features. Guess whos using konqueror.
Have you bothered to actually use Nautilus? If anything, it has more features than Konqueror. It's incredibly pluggable, with hundreds of enhancement pluggins. It's now fairly efficient and usable even on my lowly 700mhz celeron.
Personally, I was quite impressed by Nautilus of late. I guess you last used one of the 1.0.x series of Nautilus.
4) Its word processor (Abi word office) has no table support
You obviously haven't used AbiWord 1.99.3 (2.0 beta3). All recent work (the last year or so) on AbiWord has gone into version 2 - which is due to be released at the end of August. AbiWord 2 has many amazing features, tables included. Other such cool features are the Open Text Summariser and Enchant. Check them both out on the AbiWord homepage.
3) The clock, in its asswipe MM/DD format (again W!=USA)
You can change that, you're trolling with that one.
2) The file dialog (no further comment)
Being fixed in Gtk 2.4. Possibly your only valid complaint.
1) HAVOC PENNINGTON
The consensus among the majority of Gnome users and developers are that the HIG is a great thing which you obviously don't understand. It's not 'remove features', it's 'be sensible about them'.
Havoc is a dedicated and decent member of the Gnome community and Gnome - and open source in general - would be much worse off without him.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
Copy from KDE, or not, there's one important problem , the same as before with desktop environments: double architecture. Now if you want your app to have desktop indicator support, you have TWO API's to support. This is a major problem for developers, packagers and distributions (not to mention the end user).
I suggest to create a meta-API, one that can use either gDesklets and Karamba. It would expose a common set of functions and capabilities and map them to the current session's API.
Hmm.. Next OSS project..
if you dont care, dont click the link that will tell you what it is, its that simple.
/.?
why are you here? im not 1337 by any means, but cmon... hehe, i think someone put
but seriously, who uses the term techno-babble on
66.218.71.198 slashdot.org
in your host file
i sell illegal drugs
1. XML is readable by people. You don't end up with useless legacy binary files with XML.
2. You don't have to write yet another file format IO library - you can download XML readers and writers for any language, and there are simple and easy APIs (like SAX) for extracting the information.
3. XML files are cross-platform - there are no issues like endian-ness or word length to prevent the data being read.
4. XML files are self-documenting in terms of structure - tags, attributes and text content are understood by everyone - you don't need to specify your own delimiter set, escape characters, line terminators etc.
5. XML files can be validated for correctness.
6. XML is extensible. You can take someone else's format, and add your own tags with your own namespace, extending the structure of the data without altering the meaning for legacy programs (programs need only interpret the tags they recognise).
7. XML is transformable. You can easily port data between different XML tag sets, or to another file format (PS,PDF,RTF,SVG etc) using XSLT style sheets.
8. XML is searchable. You can store in XML repositories and it will be searchable on tags and attributes.
9. XML is international. There are defined mechanisms for coding international characters.
10. Almost everyone is either using it, or going to. Microsoft Office can load and save XML. Microsoft .Net and the SOAP services use XML for communication. The OpenOffice native file format is a ZIPed directory containg XML files. Why not be compatible, rather than write your own custom format?
So Yes, Everything Should Be XML
I've never understood the popularity of "active desktop" style embedded desktop widgets. I for one see my computer desktop about as often as I see my physical desktop, which is maybe once a month when I get one of my rare cleaning urges or have to find some document I printed out awhile back. What the hell do these people do at work, that they actually spend a signifigant amount of time without their deskop completely obscured by other windows?
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
you can change the window button order in Metacity through gconf-editor. The key to change is documented, too.
I have mine set as minimize,maximize, title, close.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Is that pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, like "metaphysics"? Or does it have it on the second, like "metastasize" or "mendacity"? I like the second way better.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Since they are all tied together in an attempt to destroy linux, I say "Fuck You" to all of them.
Do a web search on google or forbes magazine, for kripes sake.
WOW!
According to dictionary.com, proprietary implies exclusive control.
This suggests that RMS isn't misusing the word at all.
Perhaps you'd care to explain further?
*sigh* back to work...
You can read it here with links to the images and their comments section.
Mirror of Story
My apologies... its that Karamba that uses an arbitrary text format.
Its hilarious that I was marked as a Troll, yet in fact, Gnomes competitor to Karamba DOES use xml.
HAHAHAHAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa how I laughed!!
How about Bittorrent?
I've found that Bittorrent is a great app to mention when people go "Huh? Python?" on me. I almost always get the "Oooooh, coooool! I'll have to check that!" answer when I go "You know, the lang that bittorrent is made in."
Really, was it really necessary to mention that Slashdot comment? Slashdot is full of articles and very objective and doesn't start all that many flame wars at all. That comment was the work of one single poster!
Why did you have to mention it and blame all of Slashdot? Are you trying to slam Slashdot again? Or are you trying to make it look as if the Slashdot guys are trying to start a flamewar?
I'm sure I will get blah blah blah. You shouldn't encourage more gratuitous slams of Slashdot. Quit trying to make Slashdot look bad. Jeebus.
learn to get along.
Then we can just have Klockwork Gnome. Think of it merge that gear thing KDE has going with Gnome and you have a full on Tinker Gnome thing going.
And what zit-faced-DND-Lovin'-slashdot-reading-dork wouldn't love that?
B
Obviously the projects wouldn't be being developed if the developers (and the community around them) thought they where useless.
I've been following kde-look.org on and off for a while now, there are a lot of users who really like this stuff. I'm a Blackbox man myself, but I'm not above making my desktop easy on the eyes (I run a dressed up version of the KDE kick on mine that looks similar to this).
Too much clutter and I start to feel a little distracted, but I really like that the Linux desktop if finally starting to come into its own.
Of course if you don't like you still don't have to use it.
Quack, quack.
Or their server would be down.
Quack, quack.
Thats just one of the reasons its soooo nice using open software!
Quack, quack.
for a second there I was worried you were going to say the Mac version was the i-Karamba.
This conversation definitely needs more Pogo
Anyway, I wrote a whitepaper on this sort of thing back in '98. Look around, i'm sure it's still floating around somewhere. Might be useful.
Bowie J. Poag
I'm still waiting for the KDE User Network Tool...
The assumption being that every program will grok the same set of XML tags...right...
I'm not qualified to determine what constitutes an "ugly hack", so I can't say which is better, KDE or GNOME.
But I can say, KDE takes twice as long to load/unload. On slower machines, that can be a significant amount of time. KDE takes quite a bit more memory to run as well.
That being said, why would I want sensors running in another window sucking up resources when I can just stick xosview always on top on my main desktop and keep a constant eye on things instead of having to switch desktops all the time.
But I guess people want to find a use for all that power that comes with a better CPU.
The assumption being that every program will grok the same set of XML tags...right...
Ah, no. The only assumpution is that HUMANS will be able to grok the tags, not the format. The beauty of XML is the ablity to use a standard editor on non-standard files. Your editor always knows how to create a comment, excape special chars, and verify a document to make sure it is valid(via a DTD).
Of course many config files don't have a DTD created, but isn't really an XML problem.
(appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I clecked on the links, they didn't help. Somehow both are a framework for some "eye candy". I have no idea what kind though. I saw some screen shots, but I'm not sure what is the eye candy they are trying to show me, and what is part of the desktop.
I use KDE all the time. I might even use Karamba. If so though, I don't know about it. Since I don't develop Karamba stuff, and appearently it is a framework I shouldn't care about it. I do care about the end results, which I might already have.
> this one you site has a sample size of 600 developers
hello? statistically speaking, a sample size of 600 developers is quite enough.