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OpenOffice.org: KDE Integration Project Launched
vfs writes "Someone at pclinuxonline.com noticed that a OpenOffice/KDE Integration Project has been started to "provide tight (but optional) integration of the OpenOffice.org to the KDE environment beginning with KDE look and feel and ending with KDE data sources." This could offer a great opportunity for enterprises to deploy an integrated, unified desktop." (Here's the dot.kde.org post on the project.)
Come now. Running applications in GTK, running applications in QT, really does it matter? This whole toolkit integration war is causing more problems than it's solving! Instead of rewriting apps so that they integrate better in KDE or GNOME, we should be concentrating on things that really matter... you know, like a package management system that doesn't suck or an in installer that doesn't suck?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Most of a 'desktop environment' important details are underneath, not the pretty GUI. ( though the importance of having a CONSISTANT GUI shouldn't be dismissed. )
GNOME should have had mechanisms in place from DAY ONE for shared information and intercommunications.. not something that was seemingly tacked-on later.. Integration of the desktop must be done on the fonctionnality level, not on the software level.
KDE is much closer to this, as they PLANNED ahead, and didn't just wing-it since it was 'pretty'. See here for example.
On the other hand, the problem with GNOME is that they use GTK+ object-oriented style, but don't borrow the most important aspect of (early, anyhow) GTK... cleanliness and simplicity! Without that, the GTK-inspired GNOME macro, er object, system is COMPLETELY INCOHERENT and to put it completely blunt: SHIT.
Not to mention the fact that the numerous API libraries do not work well together and stability will _never_ be achieved since one package will _always_ depend on something that is considered beta or unstable.
Don't even get me started on the various ad-hoc configuration mechanisms and the nightmare that is CORBA and Bonobo.
Sorry to sound harsh, but it was a complaint of mine from day one of GNOME, it just wasn't professional.. They worried more about a smelly foot in the menu then making it solid and consistent.. Now they are finding out the price to be paid if they want to stick around and be more then a cute plaything...
But I'm not really sure what to think of it, honestly. That they'd have to involve money to have things that SHOULD be simple get done.
Stop developing for KDE, its as nasty and crappy as MS windows.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.