Konqueror Compiled For Mac OS X; KOffice Next

scishop writes "Benjamin Reed has just compiled Konqueror for Mac OS X after porting the KUniqueApplication class. A screenshot of the running program can be found here. According to Reed's blog, 'next up is KOffice.'"

Comments

seems odd...

[fiftyfly]

that this port would have taken longer then, say, the port for my pda (zaurus 5500) or cygwin?

Re:seems odd...

[Anonymous Coward]

while I agree that it is odd, there were a good number of other browsers for OSX

MSIE, Netscape/Mozilla, Safari, Camino, etc.

Re:seems odd...

[after]

What a great idea!

That IS odd that they could not have ported
that to the Cygwin platform... I mean, X11
is available and all.

Wait, but isnt there already a port of KDE
to Cygwin?

Re:seems odd...

[Durin_Deathless]

This port doesn't use X11 at all. I have been on the maillist, and the stumbling block has been the X11 specific code(and a minor thing in QT-mac, reguarding extensions of shared libs). This is a real achievement, and rangerrick is to be greatly congratulated!

Re:seems odd...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a real achievement,...

No, it was just a lot of work. There is a difference, though I suspect that detail is lost on a lot of people here.

Re:seems odd...

[mlk]

Shame it is so dam slow on Cygwin...

Re:seems odd...

[treke]

You do know that konqueror does run on the Zaurus just fine, right?

Re:seems odd...

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

Lighten up dude. Do you feel proud of your accomplishments wrt any of your hobbies? This guy is using his spare time to do something he is interested in. Any time a milestone happens in such projects, congradulations are in order. He should give himself a pat on the back.

Sure it's not rocket science but most hobbies aren't.

Re:seems odd...

[Xabraxas]

Maybe it's because you totally misunderstood the parent poster. He said:

seems odd that this port would have taken longer then, say, the port for my pda (zaurus 5500) or cygwin?

If it took longer to port konq to OSX and that has come to pass already, logic would infer that a port was already made for zaurus and cygwin. Hence it seems odd that it would take longer to port to OSX then the both of them.

So in reality this little statement:

That IS odd that they could not have ported that to the Cygwin platform... I mean, X11 is available and all.

Wait, but isnt there already a port of KDE to Cygwin [sourceforge.net]?

Is not informative at all. Actually it is redundant.

Re:seems odd...

[after]

I couldn't find your email address.

Thanks for clearing this up for me, I feel a little dumb now. I think I was in too big of a rush to fully understand the OP.

Why did I say I couldn't find your email? Because the last time I posted a personal note I got modded down. Strange, don't you think?

Re:seems odd...

[msh104]

This IS a very good thing, IF we are ever going to replace X or if you would want to use KDE under your framebuffer you would be able to do this by using a QT version designed for it. so framebuffer qt/kde without X at all isn't that far away, it is also a goal for kde 3.3 to remove all X depenencies in kdelibs and kdebase, if that is archived go can run kde on anything that has a QT port. it is not only cool, it is also a very flexible and orginized way of designing apps. GOOD WORK.

Re:seems odd...

[cloudmaster]

The port was mostly done a long time ago - it was released under the name of "Safari". Porting the rest of KDE so it could keep the old crappy UI was the hard part. :)

Re:seems odd...

[aldoman]

They don't plan to have it ported over to Aqua until 2006... which really is plain shit.

OpenOffice, for the good it does, IMO is useless at making good releases. I mean it took months to go from 1.0 to 1.1, and 1.1 has a PDF and Flash option and very few others...

Re:seems odd...

[Xabraxas]

Let them mod me down for personal comments. The only reason I care about having an account with a decent moderation score is so I can post as much as I want and I can keep track of my posts.

Most people on these forums are highly opinionated and given the chance to mod someone down that they disagree with, most of them will do it. I too am highly opinionated, but I make an attempt to be fair when I moderate. It's unfortunate that not everyone does.

Don't you mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Konquerer Kompiled For OS X, KOffice Knext?

Re:Don't you mean

[ajs318]

Watch out there. Have you not heard the news? SCO just discovered that they own The Simpsons. They have already changed their name to SKO and are demanding a $200 payment for every "Komedy K".

Now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get a KTHML compatible browser compiled for Windows? Konquerer or Safari, anything... make it easier to test web designs.

Re:Now...

[Aggrajag]

You should check KDE on Cygwin.

Works nicely, IMHO, but I haven't tested Konqueror if it compiles.

Re:Now...

[gusnz]

As another poster mentioned, the whole KDE environment has been ported to Cygwin. It works, but it's a pain as it has to run inside a whole X session.

However, I know what you mean... and yes I would love a Windows-native Konqueror port! There's one guy who is (supposedly) starting a port. It looks impressive on the front page, but has been stalled for a year and if you browse through the project forums, the guy admits he isn't really a Windows developer and is still deciding on what compiler to use. So basically, are there any skilled C++ hackers out there who would like to get involved in a KHTML -> Windows port? There's a few good reasons:

1) Choice of browsers on Windows. Even if you just ported KHTML rather than the full Konqueror, the KHTML engine rocks and could make great inroads against IE (compared to Mozilla/MozFirebird, which doesn't seem as fast as IE to load or as responsive on low-end hardware, even though it's a superior browser/renderer engine).

2) Porting all of Konq would rock too, as it offers a lot over plain vanilla EXPLORER.EXE.

3) Development, as the parent pointed out. I'm a XHTML/DHTML/CSS/JavaScript/etc. coder, and would like to certify that my projects work in KHTML. It's damn hard currently. And once Windows developers can get pages working perfectly in KHTML, all Konqueror/Safari users win.

4) Giving average desktop users more exposure to OSS. I'm looking at chucking Linux on this box again (last I tried was Mandrake 6 or 7) and wouldn't mind familiarising myself with its apps on a day-to-day basis first.

5) Why not? It's there ;).

Re:Now...

[rixstep]

doesn't seem as fast as IE to load or as responsive on low-end hardware

The 'low-end hardware' bit I can understand, but traditionally, IE has cheated in two respects:

1. It plays dirty tricks, tries to foul up Netscape/Moz starts, and the Moz code has to go hunting in the Registry for all the booby traps and remove them first.

2. Windows loads most of the IE engine on startup. MS used to have a 'Preload' key in the Registry which could be turned off. If you turned it off, IE was slow as molasses to start. MS have removed the key now, and what I've heard, on XP Moz loads about as fast as IE. But that's only what I've heard.

Re:Now...

[HulkProtector1]

Yes, this is true...I messed around and used internet explorer on a linux box, and firebird started just as fast as explorer

Re:Now...

[Reziac]

My first thought when I saw this article was likewise "has anyone done a Win32 port?" Because of all the browsers I've used, Konq is the most similar (operationally and for sheer speed) to my beloved Netscape 3.04. While I was glad someone else had a similar thought and tried to act on it, it's discouraging that the project stalled barely out of the gate. Alas, IANAProgrammer, or (since NS3.x source is unavailable) I'd be thumping on it myself.

Hopefully this little bit of exposure will draw in an interested Win32 coder or two... ... and I need to update my Mandrake box as well, it was last seen at v7.2!

Re:Now...

[hkmwbz]

" the KHTML engine rocks and could make great inroads against IE (compared to Mozilla/MozFirebird, which doesn't seem as fast as IE to load or as responsive on low-end hardware, even though it's a superior browser/renderer engine)."

There's already Opera for that, and it's great for lower-end hardware. No wonder, since it has to work on embedded devices, and they aren't exactly the most powerful systems. But I'd love to see KHTML for Win32, for one reason:

"would like to certify that my projects work in KHTML

Yes! This is why a KHTML browser is needed. Sure, it can compete with MSIE, Mozilla and Opera, but webmasters need it to check their code!

However, it does have some way to go before it can rival Mozilla and Opera when it comes to standards compliance. But with Apple behind it, it might turn out to be better at that in the future.

Re:Now...

[BiggyP]

so, you want a win32 port so that you can have something similar to your "beloved Netscape 3.04", i guess you're a win32 user, why not use NS3.04 and it's spectacularly dated rendering engine, in some ways it may well render pages more accurately than KHTML (or Apple(R) Webcore as i'm sure they'd like you to call it)from some of the screenshots i've seen recently from a friend.

my best guess is that Trolltech put out Qt-mac as GPL in order to encourage the opensource community to use it, support it, develop it, because they've pretty much given up.

and while i understand that RangerRick has done a lot of work, it's been done before, just look in his blog for screenshots of it from Sam Magnuson of Trolltech http://ranger.befunk.com/blog/archives/000072.html (i'm impressed by just how truly dreadful Qt's aqua theme is) i guess the guy didn't want to release any patches or sources at the time though, since anyone building would've been violating GPL

Re:Now...

[Reziac]

To give you a serious answer: because I have hopes that Konq on Win32 (which, yes, is my main OS) can be a useful alternative for those few sites that won't play nice with NS3.04. I don't particularly like Mozilla (bloated, slow, emulates IE [ick!] operationally), but I *do* like Konq on my Mandrake box, so I figure I'd like Konq on Win32 as well. And while alternative browsers abound, those that come anywhere near NS3.04's rendering speed *and* simplicity of operation are, other than Konq, nonexistent. (Nope, not Firebird either, not even close.)

I'm not a Mac user, so nothing to add in that direction, but it does seem to me that application ports, for apps like Konq, to *any* platform are of general benefit, in that folk have more chance to use the apps of their choice without being locked into a given OS by said apps, and it gives those apps wider exposure as well -- perhaps even inspiring someone to port them to yet another platform.

Re:Now...

[BiggyP]

well, that's fine, but Konq can't be ported to win32 unless someone throws some money at the developers to pay trolltech's fee(and goes easy on the GPL compliance) for a win32 version of Qt, and anyway, i've never found konq's rendering speed any better than the competition, the only major difference is it's poor page rendering, especially with CSS.

have you tried either K-Meleon on win32 or Galeon/epiphany on *nix? these all perform great from my experience, and i probably use mozilla proper less than the others on linux.

grabbing attention and porting to other platforms is a great reason for a port, but not a Qt port, at the moment there's no free win32 version of Qt and all the KDE apps already run on linux, so it's pretty much the end of the line.

i'm not trying to get at either Konq or NS3, but this whole licensing thing has done nothing but annoy me, especially since i've worked on a project to put out a collection of opensource win32 software, TheOpenCD, and have had to turn down apps developed with Qt on win32 because of the license.

Re:Now...

[Reziac]

I was under the impression that the Qt issues had been resolved, but maybe not.. I don't follow such things all that closely. However, I know what you mean about lic.issues being an annoyance -- the old code-we-don't-own problem is reportedly why NS3.x source isn't available :(

Haven't tried the other browsers you mention, but ought to give 'em a shot on General Principles. (You know that long list of software you've been meaning to check out? Mine goes back years. :)

Thanks for reminding me about TheOpenCD, which seems a worthy project.

Re:Now...

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Or he could try MandrakeMove or Texstar's live CD based on Mandrake, PCLinuxOS 2K4.

OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[weston]

I wonder if there's a platform on which you get more browser choice than Mac OS X....

'course, the number of Mac/OS X only browsers sortof makes it cheating...

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[OmniVector]

lets see.
you get:

• gecko
• • mozilla
  • firebird
  • camino
• khtml
• • konqueror
  • omniweb
  • safari
• mac ie
• opera
• icab

that's getting to be quite an impressive list. 4/9 of those are mac only. i doubt you can consider mac ie a separate browser from windows ie, even though they are two totally different rendering engines.

icab is crap, and no one uses it anymore. mac ie still gets used quite a bit soley because it's the default browser shipped with 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. it's also included in 10.3, and i know some people who are too stubborn to give safari a try. i still consider it crap however. omniweb is safari in drag. and konqueror, although nice it is finally ported, is more or less for proof of concept. opera for mac isn't even up to 7.0 yet if i remember right, with opera being all pissed at apple releasing safari. so that really leaves you with safari, and the mozilla browsers. the only 2 that are mac only in that lot are camino and safari.

i'm dying for a browser as powerful and simple as safari to hit linux. epiphany's not quite there.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[grEchelonSurge]

Funny; he's making the most of the plethora of choices. He was running Safari when he took the screenshot.

Look down in the dock. He's even got a webpage open in it.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Graff]

omniweb is safari in drag. and konqueror, although nice it is finally ported, is more or less for proof of concept. opera for mac isn't even up to 7.0 yet if i remember right, with opera being all pissed at apple releasing safari. so that really leaves you with safari, and the mozilla browsers.

OmniWeb may use the same underlying rendering and scripting engine that Safari uses but it is actually quite different than Safari. They are both great products but OmniWeb by far provides you with more functionality

About the only thing that Safari has over OmniWeb is tabbed browsing. OmniWeb has many more options than Safari such as regex filtering of content from sites, the ability to easily masquerade as any type of browser running on any type of operating system, autofilling of forms, tons of display options, the ability to set up shortcuts for the url input line ("google something" starts a Google search for something, "dict something" looks up something in dictionary.com, etc), and much more.

I'm not knocking Safari, it's a really nice, lean browser but its feature set is almost too lean. OmniWeb is kind of like a full-featured version of Safari.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Eridius]

Safari has browser masquerading (enable the Debug menu), autofill, and such. There's no shortcuts, but I *believe* there's a third-party plugin that adds it (I'm not sure). There's no regex filtering, but PithHelmet is a third-party plugin that adds it.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[101percent]

I know omniweb uses webcore, but is it really khtml? You may be wrong on this. I know omniweb has been around for a long time, which also makes me think they've had a propreitary engine for a while now.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Megasphaera Elsdenii]

many of the things you list are there natively in
Konqueror; I wonder, then, why Apple left them out
in safari:

> OmniWeb has many more options than Safari
> such as regex filtering of content from sites,

OK, missing in Konqueror too (2.2.2 that is)

> the ability to easily masquerade as any type of
> browser running on any type of operating system,

available

> autofilling of forms,

somewhat

> tons of display options,

depends on value of 'ton' :-)

> the ability to set up shortcuts for the ur

yup, is there, it's called 'enhanced browsing',
e.g. "gg:konqueror" will throw 'konqueror' at
google, and you can define any old URL your self

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Alan Partridge]

" omniweb is safari in drag."

In the same way that a car is an engine in drag?

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[OmniVector]

it previously used to be it's own rendering engine up until recently when apple released webcore and javascriptcore (or is it just javacore?)

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[jaytay]

the ability to set up shortcuts for the url input line ("google something" starts a Google search for something, "dict something" looks up something in dictionary.com, etc),

While it's not built in you can now add this functionality to Safari with Sogudi

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[JamieF]

Mac IE is also still the "must browse with" selection for a number of sites including MS LiveMeeting (used to be Placeware).

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[AkaXakA]

Even though it is an impressive list, you can still only test for the 5% of the webbrowsing population.
The rest use IE 6, 5.5 & 5 (an yes, they all have their own quirks which is, quite frankly, a massive pain in the backside)

On windows, there is now a way (http://www.skyzyx.com/downloads/) to have all of those on one machine. In addition, the gecko rendering engine is there. The only one missing is khtml, so if that'd be ported you'd make quite a lot of webdevelopers happy.

PS. On Linux, the same applies as Mac, but you might get wine to work with the stand-alone IE's.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[saintlupus]

No, it's more like saying that Car A, that uses the same engine as Car B, is Car B in drag.

My AMC Matador uses the same engine as a Jeep Grand Wagoneer.

Sometimes the wrapping around the engine makes a pretty big difference.

--saint

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[welshsocialist]

I'm not knocking Safari, it's a really nice, lean browser but its feature set is almost too lean.

The previous poster is on target about how limited Safari prefs are. I'm starting to think that Apple thinks users are scared of preferences.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[clarkcox3]

They did have their own engine, but they scrapped it in favor of webcore (aka Safari's rendering engine, aka KHTML)

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[NaugaHunter]

You forgot lynx. Now with SSL!

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[jcr]

Don't forget lynx..

-jcr

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Alan Partridge]

Don't American cars have the stupidest names on the planet? They make Japanese car names sound sensible!

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[ChristTrekker]

icab is crap, and no one uses it anymore.

iCab is impressive in the fact that it's essentially the work of one man. Two if you count the InScript (iCab's ECMAScript engine) developer. Until Opera got into the Mac scene, it was the number three GUI browser for the Mac, and it had implemented the link tag, which spurred Opera and then Mozilla to do so. With that in place, intelligent pre-fetching became possible, and Herr Clauss implemented that too. For these reasons alone iCab is important. Add that it's the only actively developed browser for Classic MacOS that I know of, and definitely the only actively developed browser for 68k Macs, and it is definitely worth mentioning. These niches may be small, but if you're in that niche, iCab is the most important browser out there. My mother-in-law has a 6100, and iCab is the only modern browser (broken ol' Netscape 4 is not really an option) she can run with acceptable speed.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[saintlupus]

Don't American cars have the stupidest names on the planet?

Stupidest promotions, too. If I recall, the last year that the Chrysler Imperial was available you could get it in a "Frank Sinatra" edition. This meant that you got little "FS" monograms on the fenders, a cassette collection of Sinatra music, and a few thousand extra dollars on the price tag.

Can't imagine why American cars couldn't be sold to anyone in the 80s.

--saint

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[mooredav]

mac ie still gets used quite a bit soley because it's the default browser shipped with 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2.

IE is still necessary because a lot of websites break other browsers. I've encountered several government web sites that don't work with Safari. For example:

Dear Direct Loan Borrower,

Thank you for your email inquiry. The Safari browser for MAC is not a supported browser to access our web site. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,
The Direct Loan Servicing Center Email Support

Each web site that broke was an ordinary fill-out-the-form web site that had some code to verify that the input was well-formed. You can't submit the form until you've entered valid data. When using Safari, there is always a field for which the verification fails, usually something completely ordinary like a date field. How hard is it to code up a browser-independent way of verifying that the date looks correct? What happened to standards compliance?

I guess when your work is done by the lowest bidder, details like this get ignored. The government says "make it do this and that", then the cheapest contractor says "that can only be done on IE". Bullshit.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[OmniVector]

I'm a web designer, and i never test my pages in anything but safari and camino. Guess i'm paying most windows web designers the same lip service they pay other platforms :)

And yes, you can run IE 6 on the mac. It's called virtual pc.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[OmniVector]

the only X11 browsers currently ported by Fink and darwinports are konqueror and dillo. dillo is a very lightweight browser. i doubt it even implements javascript. i didn't mention the console based browsers because those aren't graphical browsers.

and i already mentioned konqueror, so i pretty much listed all the graphical browsers. oh, and you forgot w3m (my favorite) :)

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Electric Eye]

I think the state of Mac browsers right now is pretty sad. I am still on OS 9 (old computers) and have finally made the switch to Nutscrape 7 from IE 5.1. IE is just WAY too unstable. NS 7 is much better, but dammit, it still has some stupid bugs. Hell, it doesn't even work right with PayPal's web site! And those pull down history menus get stuck BEHIND the browser. Annoying.
Anyway, hope this new thing becomes a winner.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[aldoman]

You could just copy and paste the HTML source into a local document, check that the ACTION of the tag is pointing to the right place and rip out the javascript. Always works :).

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy being unemployed.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Graff]

many of the things you list are there natively in Konqueror; I wonder, then, why Apple left them out

Apple didn't port Konqueror, they ported KHTML and its associated libraries. This became WebCore, the rendering and JavaScript engine that now comes as a part of Mac OS X. WebCore is used by Safari, OmniWeb, and several other application to handle their rendering and some other jobs that a web browser needs to handle.

So I'm sure that Konqueror is quite a bit different than Safari or OmniWeb, although they all use the same or similar rendering engines they are all quite different front ends to that renderer. They all sound like they are great programs, but each has its own features/disadvantages.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Graff]

Of course you can enable some of these features on Safari through the hidden Debug menu and add-ons, but it is much less complicated just to get OmniWeb and have these features supported and easy to get at.

Like I said, Safari is nice but OmniWeb is similar to Safari Pro when compared to Safari. If OmniWeb included a tabbed browsing option it would pretty much surpass Safari in almost every way. OmniWeb is not as lean, simple, or quick as Safari but the advantages that Safari has over OmniWeb are very small.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[.com b4 .storm]

OmniWeb may use the same underlying rendering and scripting engine that Safari uses but it is actually quite different than Safari.

I came very close to buying OmniWeb 4.x, but two things really killed it for me: the lack of tabbed browsing, and the lack of integration with the keychain. There are a few very bad crashers, too.

The absence of tabbed browsing isn't a huge deal when combined with Expose, but having a great window manager doesn't make having duplicate windows with duplicate controls any less cluttered or resource wasteful. Combine that with the fact that the dozens of logins, passwords, etc. I have in my keychain can't be used in OmniWeb. I hear that both tabs and keychain access will be in OmniWeb 5, at which time I will give it a serious look again.

Don't get me wrong - Safari is not perfect. I miss some of the nicer features of OmniWeb, like the very flexible useragent settings and keyword shortcuts. I also miss the better performance on pages with Flash and, for that matter, the ability to disable the various plugins easily if I want to. Contrast this with Safari's pitiful performance on pages with embedded Flash, especially sites that make obscene use of Flash ads (yeah, I'm talking about you, IGN). Anyway, that's my 2 cents...

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[goljerp]

I use iCab as my "primary" browser on OS X for several reasons:

1. Sometimes I get a bit paranoid about cookies. iCab gives me much more control over them than Camino, Firebird, or Safari (all of which are "secondary" browsers, used only if iCab is having problems with a site.)

2. iCab has very flexible image-filtering capabilities. It can be tricky to set it up correctly, but once it's working... it's terrific.

3. Kills pop-ups dead, but makes it very easy to let needed ones go through.

The main problem with iCab: it doesn't fully support CSS 2 yet. This makes some otherwise well-behaved sites look yukky.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[101percent]

I guess webcore must be impressive if omniweb ditched their own engine in favor of it.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[sootman]

"the ability to set up shortcuts for the url input line ("google something" starts a Google search for something..."

command-L, tab puts the cursor into Safari's built-in Google search. and you know how Google always echos "Searched the web for _foo_." on your search results page? That underlined word is a link to the word at dictionary.reference.com. It all depends on the user. If you need to look up words, use regexp, etc., use Omni or whatever. Me, I can't live without tabs. Anyway, not posting to say you're wrong, just pointing out a couple lessser-known features.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[Graff]

I came very close to buying OmniWeb 4.x, but two things really killed it for me: the lack of tabbed browsing, and the lack of integration with the keychain. There are a few very bad crashers, too.

I've had a few crashes with the latest versions of OmniWeb, but nothing to write home about. I'd say I get maybe a crash a week, under very heavy use.

I use the keychain with OmniWeb all the time, there doesn't seem to be any negative issues there. Seems to work great.

Tabs, yeah that's something not in OmniWeb and I'm not sure when or if it will ever be. I could give or take tabs though, the benefits of OmniWeb outweigh the lack of tabs - at least for me.

The best thing though is the responsiveness of the people over at The Omni Group. If I send in feedback they are great about asking me for more details and I've even had a few features added that I (and probably quite a few others) thought would be cool. I paid like $20 for OmniWeb 2 years ago and that purchase is still good for full updates and everything. I don't know if it will apply for version 5.0 but I really wouldn't mind giving them a little more cash, I've definitely gotten my use out of that $20.

Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice?

[arothmanmusic]

I wouldn't consider "Mac IE" a choice really... as far as I'm concerned, if the developer has dropped the application and isn't ever going to fix it or update it, then it's not a valid option. Unless of course it's already perfect, but we're talking about Microsoft here...

The question is..

[subk]

Someone please answer this -- this is not flamebait.

Why bother? I seriously doubt anyone would go full-tilt KDE on an OS X box. Mozilla or Firebird are great browser choices.. Why bother to port Konqueror?

Re:The question is..

[cbreaker]

I guess the best answer is: Because it's there.

But Konqueror is a good browser and the KDE folks put a lot of work into it. Options are good, and this is just another option.

Re:The question is..

[subk]

..YAUPTWGNMS

Yet Another Useless Port That Wont Gain New Market Share.

Re:The question is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother? I seriously doubt anyone would go full-tilt KDE on an OS X box. Mozilla or Firebird are great browser choices.. Why bother to port Konqueror?

Konqueror is more than just a web browser. I would install it on Mac OS X to get all the wonderful KIO slaves that come with it like tar and sftp.

Re:The question is..

[cbreaker]

This still doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. It's free software, and this guy loves his Mac apparently, so why not?

I guess I'm not as cynical as some people.

Re:The question is..

[grubi]

It's more than just about a browser. It's about porting Linux/KDE stuff over without middlemen like X11. That's a nice little achievement.

And if someone really really sees no point, THEY DON"T HAVE TO USE IT. :-)

Re:The question is..

[gregfortune]

At it's core, this is simply a UI choice. Do you like how Safari renders, but don't like the interface? Now you've got another choice. Not too thrilled with Mozilla? Again, another choice.

This also signals the beginning of an infusion of KDE apps into Mac OS X. Basically, this proves it can be done and more are likely to follow.

Re:The question is..

[subk]

Right on. I see the merit in spending time porting an app for your own personal enjoyment, but right now IMHO the KDE team could reap great benefit from spending time on a Windows port of Konqueror and KOffice (possible?)--a platform which does not yet have great choices for (good) free software packages.

Re:The question is..

[keating_5]

Konqueror is more than a web-browser. Its other major use is as a file manager, among other things.

Re:The question is..

[Kesha]

Well, the reasons for porting KDE to Mac OS X natively and the reasons why someone would want to use Konqueror on OS X may be different.

Konqueror is not just a browser. It is also a file manager (kind of like Windows Explorer on SuperMan steroids). It suppors io-slaves, which gives Konqueror network transparency that I do not think is paralleled by any other file browser right now. Also, some people dislike the OS X Finder and would prefer to use Konqueror instead.

Konqueror is pretty cool - it has all the latest features such as tabbed browsing, but it also allows to split any view into two (and then again) - you can make it look like Norton Commander if you like.

Konqueror also supports archiving web pages as .war files (I do not know if this is an exclusive Konqueror feature or not, and I don't care - it is extremely useful).

So, there are many reasons someone would want to use Konqueror, and not just on OS X or Linux.

The reason to port to OS X could be so that KDE were less dependent on X11 hacks and used Qt API more thoroughly, I don't know. The thing is - the more portable the code is, the fewer bugs there are (unless of course they start #ifdef-ing everywhere, then it just turns into a mess of duplicated non-portable code).

Paul.

Re:The question is..

[CAIMLAS]

You sound like a troll (nobody mentioned anything about a full-tilt KDE port on OS X, fool), but...

If you noticed, this makes konq native. I don't know if you've ever used konq before yourself, but let me tell you: it's a very good browser.

I now use it primarily - and occasionally fire up mozilla/galeon/firebird to do various other things. What makes konqueror good?

- it's fast and stable
- all the 'modern' features you'd expect in a browser are available (popup blocking, password manager, thorough history, tabs, etc.)
- it uses little memory
- it doesn't require a very fast machine to run
- it has more/better features than mozilla (fish://, file://, ftp:// smtp://, etc. etc.)
- it has native support for importing and exporting mozilla, IE, opera, netscape, etc. bookmarks.
- it is incredibly configurable in how you are able to arrange your buttons, layout, etc.
- it has a slew of other well-designed features, with modularity in mind
- it was designed from the ground up and is conceptually sound, unlike mozilla which was a hack job on top of netscape's browser
- unlike other browsers (mozilla, IE), it was designed using 'mature' technology (HTML4, CSS, etc.) and does not have nearly as many compatibility woes as IE, nor as many add-on hacks, as the other browsers had, due to changing stnadards over the years (in other words: it's a newer, fresher code base)
- unlike mozilla/firebird, I can use it for hours/days with many pages open (15+) without the entire affair slowing to a crawl and/or dying

The list goes on, but these are the main benefits in my mind of konq over mozilla or firebird. firebird is getting better, but it's still a far cry from konq. There's a reason why safari uses khtml, you know - it's good. (Or didn't you know? khtml is the render engine for konqueror, and it was used by the apple folks to make safari.

Re:The question is..

[the argonaut]

Maybe as an early step to porting KOffice or some of the other more useful KDE applications. They're just starting off with the (relatively) easier ones.

Or maybe they're just working out some of the bugs in using Qt/Mac as a demonstration to show how to port other Qt based apps to OS X?

To be honest, I really dunno the answer, but given that the OpenOffice port to native Aqua doesn't seem to be moving along that quickly, it'll be nice to have some free non-X11 office apps available.

Now if only they could make it actually LOOK like a Mac app...

Re:The question is..

[d_i_r_t_y]

i recently bought a 17" g4 powerbook (lappie) after having run a more-or-less full-time linux desktop for work and home for 5 years. OSX is nice enough (but not *that* much nicer than full KDE IMHO), but the finder (file browser) application is just terrible IMO. konqueror walks all over it for the purposes of file management, not to mention being able to browse ssh logins/port forwards (eg: sftp://matt@localhost:60022/home/matt), ftp sites, you name it, chances are konqueror can browse it, and all without feeling clunky and over-simplified. konqueror is pretty much on par with safari, but with better frills for use as a web development platform.

also, i am still trying to find an open source GUI editor for OSX that i completely like. bbedit is the best i know of so far, but is ridiculously expensive for what it is. i would much prefer to use kate (the KDE editor). seeing as i'm on holidays maybe i'll get off my arse and see about porting it to qt/mac too ;-)

Re:The question is..

[The Infamous Grimace]

"...Why bother? I seriously doubt anyone would go full-tilt KDE on an OS X box..."

Well, development of the underlying engine, KHTML, on OS X seems like a good thing to me, especially since Safari is based on it. I don't know if porting Konquerer to OS X helps Safaris' development at all, but I don't see how it can hurt it.

Besides, since when have OSS code writers needed a reason?

(tig)

Re:The question is..

[spicedhamhawg]

Well, I don' t have a Mac (will buy a Powerbook when Yahoo puts voice and webcam into the Mac client; are you listening Apple? Go put some pressure on Yahoo and you'll sell me a computer!), but if I were, I would choose Konqueror or Safari over Mozilla (especially) or Firebird, hands down. It's just a better browser, and offers a great combination of good features plus a finely-grained security model (best I've seen on that score).

If Safari is as good, I'd use it on Mac. If not, I'd use Konqureror. Firebird and Mozilla are also-rans in comparison, and of course Mac IE isn't even worth talking about.

Re:The question is..

[rendler]

- it was designed from the ground up and is conceptually sound, unlike mozilla which was a hack job on top of netscape's browser

The old Netscape code was dropped and Mozilla started it's life from stratch.

- unlike other browsers (mozilla, IE), it was designed using 'mature' technology (HTML4, CSS, etc.) and does not have nearly as many compatibility woes as IE, nor as many add-on hacks, as the other browsers had, due to changing stnadards over the years (in other words: it's a newer, fresher code base)

Mozilla is the most standards compliant browser in the world par none. It also has better CSS1/2 support than any other browser, including Konqueror.

- unlike mozilla/firebird, I can use it for hours/days with many pages open (15+) without the entire affair slowing to a crawl and/or dying

How the hell are you using it when other people including myself have had more windows open and had it running longer (into weeks) without having to restart it.

Re:The question is..

[Thomas A. Anderson]

Yet Another Useless Port That Wont Gain New Market Share.

I'm not so sure of that. At this point the only free Office Suite for OS X requires X11 (openeoffice) and while a native port of openoffice *is* in the works, I bet these folks get koffice running in OS X (w/o needing X11) much sooner that the OO port.

Re:The question is..

[cbreaker]

Login and I'll answer.

I'll also provide the Meaning of Life.

Re:The question is..

[TheTitan]

Actually, I care a great deal. A native KDE is of huge interest to me. Being able to seemlessly move from my FreeBSD desktops to my os-x desktop would be absolutely KILLER! As for the comments about Safari vs. Konqueror, Konqueror is a power user's browser that I really enjoy using because of all of its options. OmniWeb is a dumed down version of Konqueror.... that said, give me Konqueror any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but as for my spouse? She'll take a copy of Safari, thank you very much. Different apps for different folks.

Re:The question is..

[Juanvaldes]

I don't feel like arguing finder vs *, but for editor I will recomend JEdit. Between JEdit, BBEdit, vim and SubEthaEdit I have a editor for any useage (Light, medium and heavy useage)

Re:The question is..

[rixstep]

I think it's a great effort. As to why, what did Sir Edmund Hillary say about why he climbed Mount Everest?

Re:The question is..

[davidstrauss]

At it's core, this is simply a UI choice. Do you like how Safari renders, but don't like the interface? Now you've got another choice. Not too thrilled with Mozilla? Again, another choice.

This is exactly contrary to Apple's UI tradition of doing something one way and doing it right. Apple dislikes the form of choice you offer because it creates inconsistancy in the end user experience.

Re:The question is..

[saintlupus]

I'm not so sure of that. At this point the only free Office Suite for OS X requires X11 (openeoffice)

All the consumer-level Macs come with a free (as in beer) copy of Appleworks. More than enough for most home users.

Hell, I was using it as the office suite on the Mac at work and exchanging files with MS Office users with no problems.

--saint

Re:The question is..

[jbrw]

Thanks for the pointer to jedit. A php syntax aware editor, with an scp transport and some idea of a "project" is what i've been looking for for ages. I was just sitting around until xcode did it (which i figure it will sooner or later).

jedit looks awesome after playing with it for 10 minutes - seems to fit the bill nicely. yay!

Re:The question is..

[fault0]

Which is why, uh, this is not released by Apple. Notice that there are about six web browsers (i.e, IE replacements, now Safari replacements) on OSX, and ten file managers (i.e, Finder replacements) on OSX.

Re:The question is..

[TheRaven64]

Qt/Mac really is impressive. I use Psi as my Jabber client on Windows, Mac and X11 (FreeBSD and Linux), a in every platform it looks native. More impressive still, none of the developers had a Mac when they started releasing Mac versions. OOo looks and feels like a Windows program on the Mac, which is not good. AppleWorks feels like a MacOS Classic app on OS X, and Microsoft office is incredibly expensive. I suspect it wouldn't take much tweaking to turn KOffice into a native-feeling Mac office suite - once it's buildable with Qt/Mac.

Re:The question is..

[aldoman]

Appleworks is appalling. It looks like an OS9 app, and I hate OS9 with a passion.

It took me 2 years to shrug off the stigma of OS9 and consider getting an iBook (which I did when I played with OSX in-depth).

I'm hopeful that Apple will release an updated version of AppleWorks (or a new product that does the same job) at Macworld SF this January coming.

Also, both Abiword and OOo are racing to get an Aqua port done. KOffice might beat them, however ;).

Re:The question is..

[aldoman]

I would agree. But Safari integrates (like everything Apple wise) so well you just feel like you are missing out if you don't use it....

Re:The question is..

[aldoman]

Apple is working on adding Yahoo and MSN support to iChat AV (the IM client which is pretty excellent, apart from it only runs on AIM, .mac and Rendezvous). Which sucks bad if like me all of your friends use MSN. I hope they add it as it's the best IM client I've used on any platform. It's flexible and it's also brilliantly simplistic. You never go looking for an option - it's always there in front of you, but you never have too many...

Re:The question is..

[saintlupus]

Appleworks is appalling. It looks like an OS9 app, and I hate OS9 with a passion.

True. It is definitely a throwback to Apple's earlier days.

Then again, it's a comprehensive office suite that's either free with the computer or $99 retail. It opens and saves MS Office file formats with no problem. And it has some neat features that are minor, but still unique (I especially like the clip art web search).

If I didn't have a license for Office X, I'd probably use OpenOffice running under X11. But I bet my wife would use Appleworks, because it's available and its more than enough for her needs.

--saint

Re:The question is..

[bar-agent]

Well, obviously, if I think it's pointless, I'm not going to use it. That's a given. But by God, I can still bitch about its pointlessness!

Impressive.

[BandwidthHog]

But has anybody managed to get Linux running on it?

*ducks*

Re:Impressive.

[falcon5768]

throws big fucking shoe and a Panther box too

;-)

F'n Rocks

[Funksaw]

Konquerer is my browser of choice on Linux, and it's cool that we've got another choice for browser. Yeah, I use Safari, but as this is one step to porting most of the KDE stuff, I can't help but wonder if this is a big step towards the holy grail of Linux-to-MacOSX conversions, OpenOffice.

-- Funksaw

Re:F'n Rocks

[0x1337]

Not that I have anything against OS X or anything, but I don't see myself converting to a $2000 computer (or more, depending how many toy^H^H^Hfeatures you desire) with a closed source (Its OSS kernel doesn't constitute the entire OS, just the executive) ~$100 OS where each upgrade costs another $100. By all means - if you have the finances go for it. I don't - and likely never will. I think I'll stick to my $500 AthlonXP + Slackware9.1 for now. And in a couple of years - Ill switch to an $500 Athlon64 + SlackwareX.X.

Re:F'n Rocks

[the argonaut]

Isn't OO based on GTK and not Qt? If so, I would guess it really wouldn't help that much.

Re:F'n Rocks

[AntiOrganic]

OpenOffice uses its own application toolkit, if I'm not mistaken. Its new platform-specific renderer uses GTK+-alike widgets on Unix OSes, and native Win32 controls on Windows.

Also, KDE != Qt. Qt has existed on Mac for years anyway.

Re:F'n Rocks

[KrispyKringle]

You know, I'm pretty much in the same boat. I kept a Windows machine around for the longest time for compatibility, but ditched it a bit ago after deciding I rarely used it and didn't even want to have to remember to patch it. My desktop is a $500 midlevel AthlonXP.

For a while, I've wanted a laptop, as well. Now, I could get a wintel for probably seven or eight hundred, and even load linux on it and probably get most of the APM features to work, even. But I also think OSX would be great for some other reasons, such as solving my problems viewing certain kinds of media, running proprietary software, etc. Maybe I'll even start using iTMS. And Mac laptops--and, in fact, Mac workstations (just not low end desktops)--are priced fairly competitively.

So I admit, I've been thinking, if I get a decent payout from my current work, I may very well spring for a low-end iBook. As an easy-to-use, low-maintanance, commercially-supported Unix on the desktop, it can't be beat.

Re:F'n Rocks

[Funksaw]

True enough, although I tend to use a Mac for three reasons: 1) Everything at my school runs on a Mac, 2) I do alot of graphic design stuff (including comic coloring,) and 3) I haven't had a problem with the system yet.

While I do use Linux on the laptop, the problem becomes a) GIMP is good but is not only not what I'm used to but simply not good enough yet for what I need to do b) hardware doesn't 100% work (although SuSE 9 is getting there, my Belkin WiFi card doesn't work in Linux) and c) MacOSX programs are typically designed better in the UI department.

I wouldn't buy a new Mac if you're 100% comfortable with Linux either, but it's just good news for those of use that actually could use the Mac.

-- Funksaw

Re:F'n Rocks

[rixstep]

I may very well spring for a low-end iBook

They're great work-horses and worth every penny. The g/f has one. They're great boxes.

Re:F'n Rocks

[JamieF]

Don't forget about used machines on eBay. You can pick up a reasonably well configured G4 desktop for a few hundred bucks.

Re:F'n Rocks

[the argonaut]

Also, KDE != Qt. Qt has existed on Mac for years anyway.

I realize that, but KDE is dependent on the Qt Toolkit, so having a native Mac version of that was one of the things that made the Konqueror port possible. And while Qt/Mac may have been around for (2) years, the GPL'd version has been available for less than a year, and these guys wouldn't been able to do a Mac port (or at least release it) without the licensing change.

Re:F'n Rocks

[KrispyKringle]

I'm flattered that you think so much of me, but I assure you, content distributers don't redesign their business plans when they realize that their current formats aren't compatible with me. However much I may wish that to be the case.

Re:F'n Rocks

[0x1337]

WiFi?

Check the chipset - there is a *bunch* of freshly-minted new chipsets out there that are unsupported at the moment by native linux drivers. The Belkin card is likely a clone of something biggger-sounding like 3COM, Intel, or whatever...

If you want a Linux-able WiFi card get orinico-based cards. Or even better - get the Linksys WPC11 Version 3 (V3) or Version 2 (V2) or the original one. Do *not* get WPC11 v4, its based on a COMPLETELY alien chipset.

Another thing you can try is ndiswrapper. Beware - project in progress- you mileage may vary betwee working, hacking in extra NTKernel functions to make it work, and Oopsing the kernel...

Another thing you may try if your pockets are deep - are commercial wrappers that allow you to run windows WiFi drivers under linux. I think there are a couple - I'm sorry I dont remember their names.

I played around with the fscktarded rtl8180 WPC11 v4 - under ndiswrapper - but there is STILL much NT Kernel to implement to every make it work.

Whats sad is - the ndiswrapper team didn't take my patches even tho I emailed them a DIFF against the CVS :-( They were simple fuctions too....

Sometimes I wonder..

[keplon]

..Is using the letter "K" in every program made for the KDE Environment overKill?

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[TedCheshireAcad]

Excuse me, this is KDE. We don't tolerate that kind of krap.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[subk]

Nope. Just good-ole American Brand Rekognition.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnot really, when you stop to consider the gnaming convensions of other projects.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[clarkcox3]

It's no worse than all the OSX apps that start with a lowercase "i".

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[MikeCapone]

It's no worse than all the OSX apps that start with a lowercase "i".

Well, actually, it is.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[rlowe69]

At least the K makes sense. What does the "i" stand for? information? internet? integrated?

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[grubi]

It's the first person singluar personal pronoun.

iClaudius.
iRobot.
iPalindrome.i
etc.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[redJag]

Originally it stood for internet, as it originated on the iMac. The iMac was supposed to be the easiest computer to get online with at it's time of release (and it was). Not all of the applications it's applied to make sense, though. iMovie? iTunes? (Makes sense with the iTMS now, though) iPhoto? (Well, that does have web features..). Anyway, it seems to me that it stands for I now. Or me.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[Deraj DeZine]

So that makes it ok, then? I thought people were warning against blindly following Apple just because they're Apple...

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[Bishop923]

"What does the "i" stand for? information? internet? integrated?"

Yup

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[oddfox]

Haha, nice job slipping the TMBG reference in.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[kjd]

Yeah, the K of course stands for... uh... kuh-- kih--

Er.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[DarkVader]

iTunes was internet integrated from the start, with internet radio, and perfect for playing those mp3s you'd downloaded from napster.

iMovie can be used to create internet-ready content.

iDVD has much less to do with the internet, though. About the only connection you could claim is that you were going to sell the DVDs online.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[be-fan]

Maybe it stands for KDE?

No, that would be too easy...

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[TheRaven64]

Well, in Steve Jobs' case (the iCEO of Apple) it did stand for `interim', but now stands for, uh, imaginary?

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[Madmonky1]

Okay, if the K in konqueror stands for KDE, what does the K in KDE stand for?

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[grubi]

Thank you. :-)

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[Rysc]

TMBG! /me high fives

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[kjd]

http://www.kde.org/documentation/userguide/frequen tly-asked-questions.html#id2844731

It stands for 'K', and the 'K' doesn't mean anything. Like 'X' in the X Window System.

My point was that it doesn't mean anything, contrary to what the grandparent post indicated.

Re:Sometimes I wonder..

[oddfox]

They Might Be Giants

Really??

[Anonymous Coward]

iKant believe it!

Re:Really??

[Spock the Baptist]

"iKant believe it!"

The *i* here stands for immanuel as in; Immanuel Kant, but I can.

Re:Really??

[gangien]

lol great one :)

Re:Really??

[Hadean]

He was a real pissant, from what I hear.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[grubi]

You certainly told 'em, Anonymous Coward, man of the people...

screenshot

[n0nsensical]

"A screenshot of the running program can be found here."

...taken just before it crashed.

Unicode?

[grubi]

If K-Office has got proper Unicode support, then... it certainly is a good idea to switch away from MS some more...

Re:Unicode?

[netsharc]

Take a look at this...

There are a few more screenshots, just go to the parent directory.. I hope it doesn't kill his server. :)

Re:Unicode?

[Ranger Rick]

That's from the previous (abandoned) port of KDE to Qt/Mac (by one of the guys from trolltech).

It went through bit-rot and pretty much needed to be redone from scratch. This time around the plan is to keep the patches up-to-date until we can get all of the changes back upstream.

Re:Unicode?

[acb]

Except that KDE stuff usually runs like a dog.

I have a kspread spreadsheet keeping track of my CD collection, which isn't huge. It takes the best part of a minute to load it in, and changing cells causes it to freeze for long periods of time.

I'm not sure whether this is just kspread being badly written and inefficient or an intrinsic result of KDE infrastructure overheads, though I suspect the latter. There have been times when I tried starting the KDE file manager, or logging into KDE desktops, and found myself waiting minutes in doing so. This is unacceptable.

Re:Unicode?

[tyrione]

Then you have KDE misconfigured.

And no I'm not suggesting you just rm -fr .kde to then relauch X and start the preferences/configuration process all over.

For instance my KDE 3.2 CVS builds didn't install correctly due to an apt-get issue. Once I tracked it down it loads a hell of a lot faster.

Ok..... Why?

[strider_starslayer]

I've really got to ask why on this one... I mean cross compatibility and all- great stuff, but WHY? X allready has a really good, open source, web browser in Safari, it can run a native port of Mozilla, and you can run BSD apps in the downloadable X server- so what possible reason can there be to completely port it- other then perhaps 'look I ported it'?

Re:Ok..... Why?

[grubi]

I think it's more of a proof that Linux stuff can be ported without relying on X, which is why people still put up with MS Office for Mac rather than use OpenOffice. I know that's one of the reasons I do. (Flame away!)

Re:Ok..... Why?

[gregfortune]

How about the look and feel of Konqueror? Some people may prefer the UI of Konqueror over the UI of Safari.

Woot!

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Finall, a capable browser for Samba networks for Macs! Finder crashes and just plain doesn't work for me browsing Windows networks from my Powerbook running Panther. Whereas typing smb:/// in Konqueror just works like Apple claims Finder does.

Re:Woot!

[Spoing]

1. Finall, a capable browser for Samba networks for Macs!

Great! Do you think they'll port it to Linux?

Both Nautilus and Konqueror are a real PITA (one crashes and both require passwords to be entered for each and every directory -- even when the passwords are 'saved').

The best -- though still painful -- choice I've found so far is to run two copies of Nautilus under KDE; one for the lan and one for my home directory so I can cut and paste between them because KDE and Gnome don't communicate for drag and drop or copy functions. AUGH! Linneighborhood is also a PITA and does not integrate with either KDE or Gnome.

Please tell me I'm on crack or that this is fixed in either a later Gnome or KDE. I'm not using beta or alpha versions, just the current releases.

Re:Woot!

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

I've never experienced your problems w/ Konq but have you tried Komba2? Really nice dedicated network browser.

Re:Woot!

[StormReaver]

"Both Nautilus and Konqueror are a real PITA (one crashes and both require passwords to be entered for each and every directory -- even when the passwords are 'saved')."

I've been a big KDE fan since about the 1999/2000 time frame. Konqueror is a wonderful piece of work, and I can't live without it. However, the smb:// IOSlave is unreliable at best (and practically useless most of the time).

This has been a sore spot for a long time. Fortunately I can at least use LinNeighborhood to mount the shares and then use them from Konqueror. I'm not knocking the work that has gone into the IOSlave (I'm very happy that someone is at least working on it), despite whining about it here, but I would have thought that it would have been fixed long ago.

There is another usability issue I can't believe still exists within Konqueror (those people have done a miraculous job, so I have very high expectations). When I am logged in as normal user and then try to move files from my user account to another user's account (or vice-versa) on my machine (even if the other user is myself under a different account), Konqueror just won't allow it (which is mostly good). A better behavior would be to popup a kdesu window and ask for password authentication to allow the operation.

Your nit about saved passwords not really being saved is also a good one. They are only saved for that session, but are promptly forgotten when Konqueror is shut down.

Konqueror is mostly a dream come true for me, but there are several important small to medium issue that need to be addressed.

Re:Woot!

[Burnon]

FWIW, Nautilus will fix the password entry, or at least work around it. Check out this post - it describes the keyring that should be able to fix it.

I think it's really just a workaround in the case of SMB browsing, although the keyring is a cool thing to add in general. Samba ought to be caching the password for the share in the connection, but the implementation only caches passwords for root users. I don't know if there's going to be a practical issue using the workaround, or if performance will improve significantly if samba gets a boost there. Time will tell (I really need some free time to hack - arguably I should quit reading /. ...)

Re:Woot!

[TheRaven64]

Have you installed the latest update (10.3.2)? I found that fixed all of the issues I'd had with SMB. If you still have problems, then make sure you file bug reports with Apple. I filed half a dozen for 10.3, and they've all been fixed in 10.3.2. The only minor issue I have with SMB now is that when I drop off the network it still asks me if I want to disconnect each share on any computer I've browsed. Ideally it should just quietly drop these connections if there are no open files on the remote share or finder windows browsing them.

Re:Woot!

[good soldier svejk]

Still can't WINS browse my network. Finds about 300 shares, then pukes out.

Re:Woot!

[netik]

Mod this guy down. It's not an 'insightful' post at all.

Finder never crashes when browsing samba neworks under 10.3, and I've yet to have any problems with it.

Also, to repeat what a prvious user said - Konqueror breaks the UI paradigm in OS X by making things not work like a user expects. Why port the entire legion of awful Gnome and KDE apps over to such a beautiful, well working operating system?

One of the reasons why I use OS X on a daily basis instead of Linux (although I do connect to many linux servers with my OS X desktop) is because the people responsible for Gnome and KDE have yet to make a decent looking and functioning desktop.

Let's face it - they just don't stack up to how OS X works.

Re:Woot!

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Bullshit. Finder crashes daily on me browsing my Samba network under 10.3 which is fully updates.
Did you think I made this up? There's a thread going on about Macs over at OSnews and many people are having the same problem I have. Just because you haven't experienced it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Re:Woot!

[drunkenbatman]

Finder never crashes when browsing samba neworks under 10.3, and I've yet to have any problems with it

Riiiiiiiight. The only time my 10.3 finder isn't hanging in regards to SMB shares (you don't even want to get started with disconnecting shares, which is a LIL better with 10.3 but not much) are when it simply can't see them at all. Do some searching- SMB had real problems in 10.2, and they've honestly just gotten worse with 10.3. It's so rough I don't think Apple should be allowed to list the feature on the box.

A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Starship Trooper]

Perhaps someone on the Qt/Mac or equivalent GTK project could answer this for me. Why is it that when these toolkits get ported to another other platform, be it Windows, MacOS, BeOS or what have you, they insist on looking and acting as GTK or Qt applications rather than native apps? A Qt/Windows or GTK/Windows app would be much more useful and usable to me if it used native Windows widgets and thus fit in with every other program I use.

As an example, I use gaim on FreeBSD because its tabbed interface is simply the best I've come across. I would love to use it instead of Trillian when I'm forced into using Windows. But the Windows port of gaim, which uses GTK+/Windows, works horribly. The GTK theme doesn't match my XP settings, widgets draw slowly and work clumsily (tooltips in particular seem to spontaneously appear and refuse to go away, even when the program is minimized!), and all in all it feels like a cheap Wal-Mart knockoff.

GTK+ widgets offer no benefits over standard Windows controls -- they draw slower, they don't match the environment, and Windows is just as themable as GTK is. Going back on-topic, this Qt/Mac port of Konqueror likewise eschews native widgets for the entirely out-of-place Qt look. All I can ask is Why? Wouldn't it be far easier for Qt/ and GTK/Windows or /Mac to simply wrap native widgets, rather than poorly ape them?

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Fnkmaster]

You might want to check out WxWindows for a toolkit that does exactly what you propose, and does it quite well. It uses Gtk widgets on X, and native Win32 widgets in Windows (and I assume Carbon or something similar on OS X and MacOS 9).

The API isn't quite as nice, clean consistent and well-documented as Qt, but it's definitely not bad, and I've written some fairly complex GUIs with it before. They look and feel truly native, though it may take some minor tweaking to get everything perfect on all the platforms you are targeting.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[n0nsensical]

A lot of window toolkit designers apparently think they can do a better job--of course they are wrong and it ends up slow and bloated. I believe wxWindows actually does the intelligent thing and uses native widgets.

Now of course we are both going to get modded offtopic into oblivion because we're not singing the praises of Konqueror for Mac OS X. So, uhh, praise be to Konqueror for Mac OS X?

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[A Life in Hell]

QT actually can use native controls on both windows and mac os x (and in fact, the app I'm writing does this). But there are additional issues that you need to deal with then, and remember that this is a first version!

--jj

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[jdub!]

Check out GTK-Wimp: http://gtk-wimp.sourceforge.net/ Very tasty, if you run GTK+ applications under Windows (particularly XP). It's even mentioned on the Gaim website. :-)

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[mixmasta]

Because that's how QT and GTK work, they draw the interfaces themselves... Most(All?) X toolkits do in fact, it comes with the territory since X never came with a standard widget set.

If you want native widgets on your cross platform apps start supporting wxWindows. It is the only toolkit I am familiar with that does what you are asking, and is nice to use, but doesn't have a large mindshare. I believe there is a library for java that does the same, but wxPython is much nicer, imho.

Another thing that really bugs me is when otherwise perfectly good windows apps insist on drawing their own skinned interfaces when Windows widgets would work just fine.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[bogie]

"Why is it that when these toolkits get ported to another other platform, be it Windows, MacOS, BeOS or what have you, they insist on looking and acting as GTK or Qt applications rather than native apps?"

Every seen Adobe Photoshop Album? That was done with QT and "looks and acts" like a native app as far as I'm concerned.

Considering how few QT and GTK apps there available for Windows I just don't even see what's to get worked up about.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Jamie Zawinski]

it comes with the territory since X never came with a standard widget set.

Not true: X came with a standard widget framework, X Toolkit Intrinsics (Xt) on top of which the first two X widget sets were built (Athena and Motif.)

GTK and KDE both chose to ignore the existence of Xt.

One of the (several) unfortunate side-effects of this decision is that it's not possible to mix and match (for example) Motif and GTK widgets in the same application (or GTK and KDE widgets, for that matter.) Whereas, it was possible to mix Athena and Motif widgets together.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Brandybuck]

Actually, Qt under OSX can use a native look and feel. I don't know whether this uses genuine native widgets, or emulates there look. But that's beside the point. If you look at the screenshot, you'll see that it is NOT using any standard Qt styles, but instead a standard KDE style. Ergo, a plain vanilla kdelibs is being used.

Give them some time. Geez...

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Enucite]

Also, I believe that you are now given the choice of using Wimp when you install Gaim on Windows.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't installed the Windows version for quite a while now.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[nzkoz]

The problem you have is that an approach like this limits your 'cross platform toolkit' to the lowest common denominator. You're left with something that's as ugly and non-functional as AWT (old java stuff).

GTK with gtk-wimp looks and works just fine on win32. You're much better off with a nicely functioning GTK+/win32 application than you are with a piss poor wrapper around win32 widgets.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[roystgnr]

Whereas, it was possible to mix Athena and Motif widgets together.

It's possible to mix tunafish and yogurt, too, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[mixmasta]

Right, Xt slipped my mind. Would using Xt, instead of drawing, speed GTK/QT up?

I seem to remember Xt widgets looking like black and white squares, and not particularly useful these days. May be irrelevant though.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[firewrought]

Why is it that when these toolkits get ported to another other platform, be it Windows, MacOS, BeOS or what have you, they insist on looking and acting as GTK or Qt applications rather than native apps?

A few months ago, I did a lot of searching for a cross-platform GUI toolkit. Some toolkits try to use native widgets (a la Java's AWT), but most implement their own drawing, optionally with themeability (a la Java's Swing). Why this bias against native widgets? I'm going to take some wild guesses: (1) many of these cross-platform GUI toolkits were not intended to be cross-platform, but they got popular and somebody wanted a quick and dirty port of their application to windows... instead of reengineering the toolkit, it was easier to port it. (2) it's more appealing to build something new than to merely wrap existing toolkits... not always a good excuse, but commonly used, I would guess. (3) wrapping native widgets threatens to be a maintenance nightmare... if you were wrapping just one native GUI, it would be straightforward, but if you want to support several, it's going to be a painful mash of code that is constantly breaking due the intricate coupling b/t the toolkit and native code. Adding new platforms would take considerable effort. (4) It's much easier just to reduce coupling to a minimum by doing the barest amount of buffer swapping and event handling with the native windowing system... and this means drawing your own widgets. Also, (5) you sometimes might want to introduce architectural innovations that don't translate to the native API's well. (6) Finally, the toolkit can only properly support features which are in the intersection of all the native API's it supports... features that are not implemented by all native API's can be implemented by the toolkit, but then the toolkit must try to handle that case specially (or worse, the programmer has to know the ins and outs of how the toolkit behaves on different platforms).

In a word, I think many programmers are content to screw the users (or put the burden on the UI artists who have to make themable toolkits look like the real thing). It's not user-friendly, but it is expedient.

The solution is not to make better toolkits (dang we have enough of those already)... the solution is to decouple the UI from the application logic where possible. Standard file formats and network protocals, proper seperation logic into shared library components, proper use of remoting technology (CORBA, RPC, web services, etc.) all work to make this possible. Case in point: I run an imap server on my network and store all of my mail on it. I can access it via a web interface (squirrelmail), a GUI interface (kmail, mozilla, perhaps even Outlook), and a curses interface (mutt)... whichever happens to most convienient and closest at hand. This is not a solution for every problem, but it should work for your example (an IM application).

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[ciroknight]

I've actually wondered a bit about this myself, but why can't we extend it a bit...

Why can't we make a set of librarys per archetecture, per UI, so that the application is transparent to the UI? Kinda hard to explain, but it's simple. Make a layer in-bewteen the UI (be it Mac, Windows, KDE, Gnome, etc.) and the actual program itself. Make the API common between all the platforms so that the "program" can ask the widget interpreter to "draw a button here", and the widget interpreter can tell the UI that it wants a button drawn here. May lag the program a little bit, but at least all apps would look native (even between GNOME and KDE).

Not to still Starship's thunder, but I've actually been thinking about this for a while now, ever since working on the UserLinux project, and finding that nobody could choose between KDE and GNOME. I like both, they both let me get work done, it's just the programs between the two sides are completely different (ie, KDE's got lots of productivity software, office, etc, and GNOME has more of the other stuff, games, instant messangers, etc). Maybe this is a project worth starting afterall.....

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[lpontiac]

Going back on-topic, this Qt/Mac port of Konqueror likewise eschews native widgets for the entirely out-of-place Qt look.

While I can't say for sure, I'm guessing the ugly looking toolbars and status bars are actually KDE widgets, rather than widgets from Qt itself. On OS X, Qt uses the Aqua theming engine to draw widgets, so they're not Cocoa/Carbon widgets but they look just like them. They certainly don't look like this Konqueror port's UI.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[urmensch]

not only are you correct, it is the default choice.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Ranger Rick]

Qt/Mac apps generally look like Mac apps, in the case of KDE stuff, so far the style engine is horked, so it's confused as to what to make things look like, so it's pretty ugly.

It's on the todo list. Qt still doesn't directly call native widgets, but it does use the OS's mechanism for drawing, so, in theory, it looks like native apps if Qt doesn't have any bugs. ;)

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[StormReaver]

"Why can't we make a set of librarys per archetecture, per UI, so that the application is transparent to the UI?"

You've just described Qt, GTK+, and WxWindows.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Blakey Rat]

Oh yeah, good solution. To use GAIM with native widgets, he only has to re-write GAIM from *scratch* to use a different toolkit.

Did you comprehend the original poster's problem at all, or are you just trying to campaign for your favorite cross-platform toolkit?

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[be-fan]

The Qt/Mac port looks almost identical to Aqua, except for when Apple changes major things (like the tabs in 10.3) and TrollTech needs to catch up. The Qt/Windows port look native as well.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[Fnkmaster]

It's the best solution to the general problem. I am not really aware of any way to take an app that uses non-native widgets and make it use native widgets - it would probably not be possible to write a general API wrapper to go from Gtk->Windows widgets. Another response suggested Gtk-Wimp, a nice Windows Gtk theme to make things blend in - in my experience, these solutions are always "almost perfect" - they never perfectly match the look AND feel of your native platform widgets.

In other words, there IS NO solution without rewriting a tool to use a real cross-platform native widget set, or using a different native tool on each platform, or dealing with the godawful clash of different toolkits and themes everywhere you go (which personally causes me so much aesthetic pain, I can't deal with it).

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[infiniti99]

Huh? Qt/Windows apps look just like native apps, even with the XP theme and everything. Have you ever used one? See my sig.

Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent

[spitzak]

Would using Xt, instead of drawing, speed GTK/QT up?

Not at all. Modern toolkits do not use Xt for very good reasons.

Qt and KDE and every other portable tookit (except wxWindows, apparently) do not use the Windows widgets for very good reasons: they cannot add any new features to them. For instance GTK's assignment of shortcuts while you are using the menu. It is also impossible to portably subclass them in user programs and change how they draw or react to events, both of which are major features missing from wxWindows.

99.5% of the "consistent user interface" can be achieved if the system provides a "draw the rectangle for a button here" call, rather than a "button object". This is also much easier to implement and a much easier and bug-free and fast interface than Win32 style objects. Nothing is wrong with having an object interface, but it should be at a library level above a clean and debugged lower level designed so that multiple object sets can coexist.

Fortunatley there is some signs that Windows is starting to provide this, and maybe the KDE + Qt guys can get organized enough to modify their shared themes into this as well...

Re:why?

[cbreaker]

Well, for one, just because it's on Slashdot doesn't mean it's important or an achievment!

I guess the idea for this is that since Konqueror was able to be compiled, it signifies that their work on porting KDE in general is coming along quite well.

Re:why?

[gregfortune]

Because, it's the first step to creating ports of all major KDE apps. Konqueror was probably a good first bet because the rendering engine, KHTML, is already know to work on the Mac platform.

Redundancy

[General Sherman]

I'm sorry if I'm misinformed, but doesn't Safari use an edited version of the KHTML engine?

And since I'm pretty sure that's right, what is the point of this? I've used Konqueror before, and it's not a very good browser in any respect. It feels like some terrible OEM product.

This is not flamebait, what is the point?

Re:Redundancy

[clarkcox3]

You're not misinformed, Safari does indeed use the KHTML engine. But the point of this appears to be to show the world that KDE apps can be ported to OSX in a manner that they won't require X11 (which a lot of the less-expert users shy away from). This means that these applications can be "first class" Mac applications.

I.e. someday soon, we may see grandmas everywhere running KOffice instead of shelling out hundreds for MS Office.

Re:Redundancy

[cros oner]

You're right... WebCore

Re:Redundancy

[rixstep]

OK, I gotta ask the perhaps not-so-obvious.

Using X11 to port to OS X is only winning half the battle anyway - with, I think, its vector in the wrong direction - and Ranger Rick has, what I can gather, used Carbon or the equivalent for the ports - not Cocoa.

How hard would it be - and what obstacles would there be, legal and otherwise - to using Objective-C and Cocoa? On KDE itself?

Inertia.

[abulafia]

I am not a KDE or an OSX developer. (Well, I do some OSX administration, and port our apps to the platform. But that isn't the same thing.)

I'd say that covering platforms is important, because when someone says, but do you suppot Blah, you can answer that yes, indeed, you do.

Keep in mind that short term tactics are great, but strategy is what frequently offers tactical brilliance a place to shine. If KDE is everywhere, people will start to use it. That's useful. for KDE. See? Think companies, down the road.

-j, who really can't stand such heavyweight stuff.

OT, but what about Evolution?

[Phishcast]

Konqueror, okay. But we've got alternatives to that all over the place. The Linux app I really want to see on Mac OS X is Ximian Evolution. I've used Apple's alternative, but I really like the way Evolution ties into Exchange, and soon to be Novell Groupwise.

Is porting Gnome apps that much more difficult? Programming-challenged poster here...

Re:OT, but what about Evolution?

[Durin_Deathless]

First we need a Mac OS X port of GTK+. Any volunteers?

Re:OT, but what about Evolution?

[Binary Boy]

Evolution runs fine under Apple's X11, though a native port would be nice... it's a fine IMAP client in its own right, regardless of the Exchange features.

The big problem is getting those Exchange features - those are only available via the Exchange Connector for Evolution, which is a commercial product and is not available for OSX using X11. If there was a native port of Evolution then we'd still need a supported version of Connector, and would still have to pay for it.

Re:OT, but what about Evolution?

[xjerky]

Can you tell me where you found it? I've been looking for it for months!!! It's no longer available via Fink :(

Re:OT, but what about Evolution?

[Binary Boy]

Originally I found hints at http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/doing/evo-osx.ht ml... if you've got the dependencies handled through Fink (fink install bundle-gnome should do it), any recent Evolution tarball should build easily, IIRC.

Re:OT, but what about Evolution?

[xjerky]

Thanks, dude!! You're a lifesaver!! I'm going to try this out tonight.

Re:OT, but what about Evolution?

[xjerky]

Ack, the inforation on that page is very out of date. Basically I need to do what I've been trying to do all along - build Evolution and its depencencies from scratch. But one of them bails with compile errors, so I can't get any further.

Re:OT, but what about Evolution?

[Binary Boy]

Right, I've never actually succeeded by following those directions explicitly. I'd recommend trying to satisfy the dependencies via Fink, at which point you should have an environment ready for Evolution to build.

Why?

[iamdrscience]

I mean, I guess this is cool, and it's not my time being spent on this, but I really don't see the point. I've used Konqueror and I honestly think that while it's not bad, it pales in comparison to Mozilla, Netscape and Opera (plus Safari on OSX). Same with KOffice, it's alright, but Open Office is far more full-featured (and MSOffice if you like that type of thing...). I'm not a huge fan of KDE in general, but there are still plenty of good things about it. However, Konqueror and Koffice are, in my opinion, not its highlights.

A native KHTML browser for OS X?

[Steve Jobbs]

The porting of Konqueror to OS X is great news for Mac users, as they now have access to the fast, standards compliant KHTML rendering engine. Many users and developers prefer KHTML to the Internet Explorer or Gecko engines. I was wondering though...does anyone know of a KHTML browser which is completely OS X native? I mean, with a brushed metal skin and full integration into Aqua? It could maybe have other stuff too, like Google search field built-in or something. That would be cool! Anyway, in the meantime I'll just have to continue with Konqueror on OS X.

Re:A native KHTML browser for OS X?

[gregfortune]

In the Konqi address bar, type

gg:I am not Steve Jobs

And you'll probably find a page about yourself buried somewhere in the labyrinth of Google's cluster.

another cool trick on recent versions is

fish://user@host/

to get basically a sftp GUI :)

Re:A native KHTML browser for OS X?

[d_i_r_t_y]

that, and if Mac OSX could be based on a free, open source operating system, then steve and his apple buddies would really have something!

Re:A native KHTML browser for OS X?

[d_i_r_t_y]

lmfao.

Re:A native KHTML browser for OS X?

[bar-agent]

I can't decide whether parent is funny or has crossed the line to troll...

Re:why?

[abigor]

Can other browsers drag a file from a remote machine via ssh and drop it on another machine via ftp? Browse a digital camera? Connect to SMB shares? And of course, browse the Web - all at the same time, in different tabs and split screens?

No. Konqueror browses practically everything, not just the Web.

All that said, I do wonder if the kioslaves made it into this OS X version of Konqueror.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

Hey, tough guy. What's "also-ran" mean to you?

And how brave are you to hide behind anonymity?

Re:But why bother?

[gregfortune]

Because it's a UI choice. If you like how Safari renders, but the UI doesn't work like you want, give Konqi a try.

Re:How long till KDE can be the DE?

[Phishcast]

Uhh...Hey dude, install a PPC distro of Linux. Be happy with your KDE apps.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[falcon5768]

(shakes head) you dont get it at all do you... why do people put out things freeware for OS's why do people do ANYTHING nice??? because some people do things because its there, and dont really care, nor see it being that big a deal to try to make money of it themselves

Re:It figures

[skwirl42]

Umm... okay, so I figure you don't know about dselect, or apt-get, which ship with fink. They both install binaries from the fink distribution, without the need to build from source.

Just to check, I went into dselect, and lo and behold, KDE, pre-built, as binaries, is available. Saves ya lots of time. Not everything is available as binaries, but a large portion of them are.

Re:Why isn't X11 running?

[clarkcox3]

Yes, that's the whole point of what he did. You can already run KDE under X11 on OSX. (I've done it before). The thing that is special about this was that he actually *ported* it to OSX's Quartz windowing system.

Re:Why isn't X11 running?

[gregfortune]

Qt can run without X. Take a look at Qtopia, for example. There's a Qt/Mac version too so presumably Konqi is running through Qt. Of course, if Konqi was using any pure Xlib calls, then either they are gone or this guy pulled some serious magic stunts :)

safari == konquerer port ?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm confused between the differences of porting konquerer and khtml. i thought apple essentially ported konquerer by using khtml as safari's back end. here's a link:

apple: webcore

Re:safari == konquerer port ?

[PinkX]

You are a little bit confused over this one. KHTML is the Konqueror/Safari html rendering engine, like what Gecko is to Mozilla/Galeon/Firebird.

Re:safari == konquerer port ?

[fault0]

konqueror is more than a web browser.. it's also a file manager. Think WinIE/Windows Explorer (not MacIE). The HTML library made for Konqueror was khtml. Instead of porting Konqueror the app, Apple ported khtml the html library. Apple really didn't need a file manager when they have the Finder (which is a lot less capable in many ways to Konqueror, but I digress..)

Re:Oh yeah...

[foonf]

Don't worry, this should have precisely zero advantages over Safari, since Safari IS a Mac port of the very same KHTML engine used by Konqueror, plus some enhancements by Apple. This just takes those enhancements, and the native UI, back away. But it does mean the rest of KDE should be portable also, which I suppose is the real point. Although off-hand I can't think of a single KDE application which really demands to be installed (Scribus, the open-source DTP app, is pure QT and probably runs on OS X already), and I only use KDE on Linux for the desktop and file manager (which would both be totally redundant on OS X).

Ouch

[Squozen]

Damn, that's some nasty kerning on that screenshot. Safari doesn't have that problem, I wonder why Konqueror does if it's using the same rendering engine?

Re:Ouch

[be-fan]

Qt/Mac uses Quartz to do the font rendering, so the kernel problem is probably just the fonts the author is using for the screenshot.

And open source does font rendering phenomenally well. I've got a Dell UXGA LCD, and Freetype looks much better than Cleartype on this screen, given good fonts (like Vera). In my experience, OS X doesn't hint agressively enough, which makes things look fuzzy and makes the stroke weight uneven. Meanwhile, Cleartype hints too aggressively, which really distorts letter shapes. Freetype maintains a nice balance between accurate shapes and good contrast.

Re:Ouch

[An Anonymous Hero]

Qt/Mac uses Quartz to do the font rendering, so the kernel problem is probably just the fonts

Wow, a kernel hacker among us! Listen everyone, it might be Linus masquerading as "be-fan"!!!

Re:Ouch

[be-fan]

I've hacked on kernels, but not on The Kernel (TM) I'm just yet another Slashdotter who can't type...

Re:Ouch

[An Anonymous Hero]

;-)

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[grubi]

Exactly. I say that if one does not care for this recent development, why not ignore it and move along? Instead, ACs ocme out of the woodwork to start some crap for no other reason other than to annoy. Feh.

Re:How long till KDE can be the DE?

[libra-dragon]

You can do that with Darwin or X11 root window, but why?

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

How has Linux surpassed OS X on the desktop? What? There are more Linux home users than OS X users? When did THAT happen?

Re:It figures

[skwirl42]

Fink KDE is X11, unless I'm much mistaken, and I don't think I am. So the guy up there was complaining he had built KDE through fink (which is almost always X11 stuff), from source, when there were binaries available. The post is about native KDE apps, and I believe this is the first time it has happened. Fink doesn't give you that, cause it's probably not in a CVS repository anywhere.

According to the KDE webpage, as well, an X-Server is required. So this would also be the first time KDE has been built without X11...

To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts...

[manly_15]

I've made the transition from Mandrake on a Desktop to OSX on a Powerbook. Surprisingly, KDE has some apps that are very good and designed well enough to compliment an OSX environment.

Example 1: KMail! If you haven't ever tried this email client, try it NOW. It has some of the most killer email filtering speed I have ever seen in an email application. It nicely integrates with GnuPG. It has good keyboard shortcuts. It's set up not to download images from emails. It stores emails with maildir by default. It's pretty. Did I mention that it's fast? Up until 10.3's much improved mail.app, I would have killed to have KMail running naitively on OS X.

Ex 2: KOffice. I've never used it, but it's absolutely essential that OS X has a free naitive-running office package. Unless the OO.org aqua port gets back up, this package will likely be KOffice.

Ex 3: Konqueror is a very good file manager. While the OS X file manager is very good, there are a couple of areas that it misses. For example, I can use konqueror to select all items matching the file pattern '*foo*.bar'. In OS X, I have to drop to a terminal, and loose the trash can functionality, or switch views and sort by type, which takes longer. As another poster said, SMB apparently works better in konqueror than Finder (thanks, I'll have to try that!). If konqueror can run, then so can any other KDE app, especially when you consider that Konqueror is the most (featureful | bloated) app in KDE.

So that's why people bother. Props to them!

Re:To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts...

[calidoscope]

Ex 2: KOffice. I've never used it, but it's absolutely essential that OS X has a free naitive-running office package. Unless the OO.org aqua port gets back up, this package will likely be KOffice.

One of the best thing about KOffice is that it isn't a straight M$-Office clone - KOffice does things a bit differently. One of the chief advantages of OS X is that it isn't a clone of M$-Windoze (where Windoze may be considered a poor attempt at cloning Mac OS).

Re:To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts...

[Just Some Guy]

It has some of the most killer email filtering speed I have ever seen in an email application.

KMail is nice, and I used it for a while when I was trying out various GUI apps. It has some problems, though:

• No IMAP filtering. Really. You can't define filters that move mail between IMAP folders, at least as of the 3.2 beta CVS version I installed a few weeks ago. I use Cyrus IMAP on my home server and do all of my filtering with Sieve on the server, so I don't mind (and don't want) any client filtering there, but I could certainly use it at work.
• No way to hide folders without unread messages. I have about 60 IMAP folders under my inbox (yes, I really am on that many mailing lists, even if I don't always read them). I can subscribe or unsubscribe an individual folder, but that's the only way to control the size of the tree I have to browse when checking my mail.
• No way to hide read messages. Hey, you can't make this stuff up! I'm a packrat and have about 8,000 emails in my inbox, which is not a problem for Gnus, Thunderbird, or Evolution - they cheerfully keep the old stuff out of my sight.
• I'm hooked on Thunderbird's "Junk" button. Not many clients have this, so I don't hold its absence against KMail, but I'd sure like to have it.

Oh well. Thunderbird doesn't have built-in support for mailing lists, and Evolution doesn't seem to grok the concept of per-folder settings (I do personal and business email on the same server, and want a different default GPG key and .signature depending on which folder I'm currently inside). For all the growth in GUI mail apps for Linux, I have yet to find one that holds a candle to Gnus, so I'm sticking with Emacs for the foreseeable future. That doesn't mean that I won't take a few test drives from time to time, though.

Re:To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts...

[be-fan]

Dude! I didn't know Konq could do that! Sweet...

Re:To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts...

[jbolden]

Which had a modern file system first? Hint: in no case was it MacOS.

I think it depends what you mean by "modern". When Unix was created it used a very simple file system compared to most operating systems of the time because of the "everything is a stream of ascii text" metaphore. That is to get piping to work the database file systems which were common at the time were not used. "modern" file systems seem to be returning to the 70s filesystems and even on Unixes most applications don't create streams of ascii. MacOS had metadata which is more in the "modern" direction than windows.

Re:To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts...

[WatertonMan]

This is a good point. KOffice's word processor, for instance, really reminds me of a stripped down FrameMaker. I have my qualms about its interface, but it is nice to have a different approach from what most have been taking. (MS Word, AppleWorks, OpenOffice, AbiWrite)

I'm rather looking forward to the next iteration of KDE I've been reading about. If it comes out *native* for the Mac, then that's just one more big benifit for the Mac.

Re:To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts...

[The Tessellator]

On the OSX file finder "misses"; why would find file ('cmd' F) using the file 'name' 'contains' foo AND the 'extension' is .bar not work? An added advantage (to ff) is that you can also (easily) stack criteria like 'date modified' is 'is within' 'the last 3 months' So, searches like; a file that contains both the strings 'foo' and 'bar' and has a file extension '.app' that was modified in the last two weeks on the drives 'foo' and 'bar' are quick and simple.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

Ooh... tough words from the anonymous!

OS X has more home users than Linux. Why do you care either way?

Why does this item bother/concern you? Are you that small, that you cannot leave this story, which some folks find interesting, alone? Most likely you are.

So, you deal with it, Anonmymous Coward.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[libra-dragon]

For the same reason that Apple paid people to make contributions to the KHTML project.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[ColMustard]

Apple is a US-based corporation. The US has a capitalist-based economy. Aside from the fact that Apple makes good products, what is so wrong with buying anything from a money-making entity as long as you are willing to pay the price for what they sell?

If you aren't willing to pay the price, then it's not your place to complain.

As for the guy writing software for Mac OS X, it's also not your place to decide what other people should do with their time.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[grubi]

No, kiddo; YOU don't get it.

Most computer users are just that: users. Not programmers. Some (actually, most) folks want stuff that works well. And some other folks are nice enough to submit their time and effort to give those users something.

And once in a while, it's free. And how does a port of Konqueror help Apple? Doesn't it help their customers instead? Why is this an issue with you?

I figured this out this a long time ago

[el_munkie]

Check this screengrab of Konq running on OS X out.

I also figured out how to get my favotite Linux game, Enemy Territory, to run on the Mac despite the fact that a Mac version does not exist, screengrabs here and here.

Of course this was cheating since it was over X11. Konq runs acceptably, but got 1-2 fps on ET.

MHTML

[tepples]

Konqueror also supports archiving web pages as .war files (I do not know if this is an exclusive Konqueror feature or not, and I don't care - it is extremely useful).

I don't know what .war is, but a few browsers support saving entire web pages, including graphics and style sheets, in the MIME-based MHTML format (RFC 2557).

Re:MHTML

[00lmz]

A .war file is just an ordinary gzipped tar file with all the relevant files (graphics and style sheets) in it.

Not a big deal :)

[mattgreen]

after porting the KUniqueApplication class

Man, if thats all it took to port it then I am really impressed with QT. ;)

Re:Not a big deal :)

[TheRaven64]

Qt really is impressive. Take a look at Psi. As far as I'm concerned it's the best Jabber client for OS X. It's written using Qt, and when the first Mac versions were released none of the developers had a Mac.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[grubi]

So, why exactly do you care? You don't like Apple; we got it. Some of us do.

Okay. Now explain why you care about this story at all.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[dn15]

Since you're apparently a Linux fan, I'd expect you to agree that a relatively small market share doesn't necessarily mean something is "also-ran." The fact that more people use Mozilla doesn't make Konqueror bad, and so on. I prefer Firebird myself, but that doesn't mean KHTML-based browsers are worthless.

Re:My research shows....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now ... some of us happily hetero people with fashion sense and a taste for interior decorating (as well as our significant others of the opposite sex) use OS X *AND* OpenBSD.

Don't generalize/make assumptions.

As for your love of Solaris, I'd have to say that you enjoy being held over a barrel by Sun and repeatedly violated, all the while screaming "Yes Scott! Yes! Harder Scott! Faster! Ohhhhh, Scottttttt ... your onsite maintenance costs are just sooo... HUGE! Ohhhhhh McNealy! I love it when you stick me with your big overpriced hardware!"

But then, I would be generalizing.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

Wait -- people who like the products a company puts out are "groupies"? How's THAT work?

And Apple (in case no one told you) didn't put out the port of Konqueror. A private citizen did. So what's the problem?

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[grubi]

So you're admitting you're a child? Maybe I don't understand how people like me somehow don't have a life, but people who specifically try to start fights somehow do...

Biting the fodder with KOffice

[theolein]

I see all the "Why bother" posts and have seen only one short paragraph with the obvious answer: KOffice.

The majority of OSX users may not need Konqueror, even though it seems to support many features only available on OSX through payable alternatives (GUI SSH and SFTP support with RBrowser for example), but it is a first step to getting KOffice ported natively to the Mac which could finally help OSX users drop MS software in a large number of cases.

KOffice is not where OpenOffice is but a native Mac port could spur development so that it becomes a first rate alternative to MS' Office X suite, and given that there is no guarantee that MS will ever make a Mac version compatible with it's new so called security features, this is an excellent idea.

Re:Biting the fodder with KOffice

[manly_15]

For a GPL'ed SFTP/FTP program try out Cyberduck. It rocks :)

Re:Biting the fodder with KOffice

[hysterion]

Fugu is nice for SFTP, too. BSD'ed ;)

Re:Biting the fodder with KOffice

[abischof]

The only problem with Cyberduck (IIRC) is that it has no automatic switching between ASCII/binary file transfers :(.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[0x1337]

Sorry to interrupt your rather interesting catfight - but

OS X has more home users than Linux

Good way to pull statistics out of your ass...

No goatse links, Crypto Gnome=troll

[el_munkie]

OS X screengrabs are natively in PDF format. I didn't feel like Photoshopping the PDFs into JPEGS, and since it's hosted on my webserver, I don't particularly care how wasteful it is of bandwidth. Plus, I want to see how my Linux machine holds up against a small Slashdotting.

If you don't like it, fuck off.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

1. The browser is not the point. The port is the point.

2. How do you define "bit player"? If millions of people use it, how is that "bit"?

And what does market share have to do with quality?

I know I did nothing revolutionary

[el_munkie]

I have just wanted to show off the ET screengrabs to the Slashdot crowd for a while. Running an FPS over Ethernet is cool if ineffective.

I wasn't diminishing this guys achievement, I know that running ET over SSH is no more impressive, in theory, than runnning "top" over ssh. In fact, I am going to download it as soon as I get back in front of my mac.

What KIOSlaves work?

[GweeDo]

Konq isn't a web browser, or a file manager...it just happens to have KIOslaves that do these things (like KHTML for web browsing). There are other kio slaves I personally use in KDE 3.2 like smb:// fish:// audiocd:// and a few more...how many of them work? They are what makes konq powerful and useful and desired.

Re:What KIOSlaves work?

[Lord Ender]

Those KIO things are great, but there is no mention of them in the Konq handbook. None. Search for 'fish' and you find zilch. That's very poor documenting on KDE's part.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

"Linux will eventually overtake and eclipse Apple's offerings"

According to what information exactly?

It's a trojan horse for the new millenium.

[Anonymous Coward]

Konq is just a clever ruse. Once everyone is using it, Emacs will pop out and open the ports in the firewalls.

Then microsoft's vision of one network, one OS will finally be achieved. (Although, perhaps not in a manner wholly to their liking.)

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[Leroy_Brown242]

Because OSX is at a level of refinement and maturity that linux is years from reaching.

OSX, right now, is my choice for a workstation os, and I would give up tons of my personal time to help it become something even better.

Megacorp or not, I personally think it's a cause that will more directly benefit me.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[grubi]

So what? I've used the other major OSs extensively and, quite frankly, they're more hassle than they're worth FOR ME. I finally found an OS I like.

Why do you care? Have you nothing else to entertain you? Don't you own a TV or did your mom put you on restriction?

IM clients

[istewart]

Are there any good QT-based IM clients that could be ported? In my experience, none of the current OS X offerings are completely functional within themselves.

Re:IM clients

[PinkX]

Kopete is one of them, and AFAIK it is (or will be?) the official KDE IM client. It supports multiple protocols and is based on a plugin system.

And just in case you're wondering for its name, Copete is like we call here in Chile to the alcoholic beverages (like booze), and the main Kopete developer and author is chilean.

Regards!

Re:IM clients

[TheRaven64]

I use Psi, on my Mac, and it's written in Qt/C++. It's not quite perfect (no Mu-Conference support, and sometimes it jumps to 100% cpu usage for no good reason). Installing the Aqualight theme makes it look a lot more like a native app (this needs a bit of hacking in the 0.9.1pre versions, since the theme format changed. It runs on OS X, Windows and X11 (I've used it on Linux and FreeBSD).

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

1. Why is the achievement of a port pointless? And why are you spending your time worrying about what people think about this?

2. So what? Is Windows the only OS that "counts", then? How dull you must be to think so.

As far as quality, that's part of the pro-Mac argument. And why would you act so insecure as to worry what complete strangers are doing with their free tim ewith two operating systems you obviously don't care about?

Jesus, you a simple, simple tool.

Re:My research shows....

[grubi]

"But then, I would be generalizing."

And that would be rude. ;-)

And the answer is...

[fm6]

...to see if you can.

Sure, nobody's going to use Konqueror on X. Never mind Mozilla, the default OS X browser is based on Konqueror code! And I don't think KOffice will ever catch on, even among most KDE users.

It's just an interesting hack. That's what hackers do. A few months ago we had a story on a guy who built a CPU out of discrete components. Why bother, when you can buy a CPU that's 100 times as powerful for a few bucks? Because it's interesting, and challenging, and you learn stuff. The fact that nobody will use it is neither here nor there.

Re:And the answer is...

[Alan Partridge]

The default browser in OSX is still - unbelievably - IE.

Re:And the answer is...

[Ilgaz]

No, speaking from 10.2.8 (lets say, 10.2 series) OSX which came with my mac g5 (I am newbie on mac), its default browser is Safari.

Oh I still keep IE.. Wonder who wants it? Realone "plus" with subscription. Its somehow "secure" links (like exclusive radio etc) doesn't work anywhere except Mac IE. Its stated on release notes too... And they cry about MS dominance, heh...

btw, coming from PC world just 3 months ago, Mac IE is what IE should be on Windows. Standards compliance, not taking over sytem, no preloaded dlls etc. Oh also its amazingly slow even on G5. I bet those are connected with eachother ;)

Re:And the answer is...

[The Infamous Grimace]

"...The default browser in OSX is still - unbelievably - IE..."

Um, no. As of 10.3 it's Safari.

(tig)

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read most of your posts today and there hasnt been one remark that hasnt been bitchy.

Lay off the caffeine or get laid finally but your atittude is starting to wear thin.

What's next? Challenge someone to a fight?

Seriously dude, get a life.

Pierre Vatefaire-Foutre

Re:Oh yeah...

[eloki]

Now why don't we try to mimic that interface into Linux instead of everything Windows has?

We are. See Keith Packard's work on the freedesktop.org X server. Otherwise.. Apple sent cease and desist letters to all the places you could get MacOS X themes. MacOS X is attractive but I could see myself getting bored with that look.

Apple needs to catch up to Linux in some respects

[Scot W. Stevenson]

After ten years with Linux and x86 machines, I'm in the process of looking at an iBook for my next laptop instead of trying to force Linux on another unwilling, designed-in-the-Soviet-Union Toshiba or Acer. Three things have surprised me so far:

First, how much catching up Mac OS X still has to do in some respects to Linux. For example, one article in the German magazine "MacWelt" talks about defragmenting the harddisk (!) with Panther. There are all kinds of small things like multiple desktops that I can't seem to find (some of which are of course going to be due to my lack of experience). Of course, in some areas like multimedia Panther simply shreds Linux. When is there going to be a KDE version of iMovie, an Mac fan might ask with some justification.

Second, it is depressing to see how obsessed with money the Mac people still are. This is almost as bad as the Windows crowd. Going through the magazines, program after program is shareware, US$ 30 here, US$ 60 there. The sad part is that these programs are usually small, ridiculously simple tools that Linux includes for free. One good thing about getting KDE to run on the Quartz graphic engine is that it might give the average Apple user a clue to how bad greed is for software development.

Third, the lack of choice. You get one way of doing things with Apple -- a good, well designed, clever, well thought out, ergonomic way, for sure, but that is it. You have to get over feelings like "but where are the other browsers?" or "where are all the other desktops?" at the beginning if you have been using Linux for any period of time. Yeah, you know you're getting what you're getting into, but actually sitting there with one program of a certain time is still a shock.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm going to spend serious money for that iBook. Apple is on the right track here: Printing with CUPS, X11 now included, and bash as the default terminal, so I can go back to blackbox when I'm tried of all the bells and whistles. But when you get past the cool design and ignore the far, far superior multimedia tools, Tux can hold its beak high and proud. Apple is going to have to peddle really hard if they want to continue to want money for their OS.

Re:Oh yeah...

[funkhauser]

"This should have precisely zero advantages over Safari . . . I only use KDE on Linux for the desktop and file manager . . ."

You said it yourself. Konqueror is more than just a web browser, it's also a file manager, with a lot of very nice features. While the port is primarily more of a proof of concept than anything, it does have advantages over Safari.

(Sorry for stupid early morning spelling mistakes)

[Scot W. Stevenson]

Note to self: Never post in the early morning before brushing teeth. Apple might be in bloom with OS X, but they still will have not have to "peddle" hard. Argh.

Re:Why?

[AvantLegion]

OpenOffice = NO OS X native port.

A native port of KOffice would be VERY well received.

Re: Apple needs to catch up to Linux in some respe

[Doctor_Jest]

There are some apps that have less in the way of choice on the Mac, but with Fink and the now built-in X11, there's much more choice than say OS9.

In regards to browsers, there's Mozilla, Firebird, OmniWeb, iCab, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and Camino. (My favorite being Camino...)

Mail apps? Plenty. Editors? Plenty. I have 6 right now, not including TextEdit (only two cost money.)

I'm glad to hear you're moving to the Mac. I did it a couple of years ago, and my Linux box has become a server....I won't go back to Desktop Linux for the foreseeable future.

Fear not, though....there's plenty of choice. (With the exception of Window Managers..but you can run your favorite X WM fullscreen if you wish)... :D

I don't think Apple will have to peddle very hard to charge for their OS, though. It's indeed superior in many ways to what's available for free, and it also encompasses choice, something that was Linux's sole domain before OSX. I like linux too, but my OS of choice is worth every penny. Forget Windows... :D

OSX just works....I can spend hours twiddling with it, or I can set up and go with no troubles at all. That's the beauty of OSX.
---

But it does help a Win32 Port of KDE

[fault0]

Yup, a native port to OSX acheives one half of this.. in terms of removing all X11 dependencies from KDE. The other half is of course, to to finish Qt/Win32-Free (port of a GPL'd Qt/FreeX11 to Win32), which is about 80% there.. See here for some screenshots

Qt/Win32-Free would eventually allow a KDE not hampered by X11 or Cygwin dependencies on Windows.

Re:But it does help a Win32 Port of KDE

[j-pimp]

And when this becomes a little more mature. We can have KDE on Windows that RMS would approve of. Not that I seek the approval of RMS (Yes I auctually do buy closed source software.) Its nice to see at the very least free software has turned windows from a product ot a concept.

Re:But it does help a Win32 Port of KDE

[cbreaker]

ReactOS does look really neat but until I see some real releases, I put it into the Vaporware bucket.

When I see it run a real Windows driver, or application other then Minesweeper, I'll get excited.

Re:But it does help a Win32 Port of KDE

[j-pimp]

Auctually, while its not running on real (read: non bochs or vmware) hardware, and not ready for "real word applications", the kernel is pretty complete, and they have successfully ran more than minesweeper by slapping in some Wine DLLs. Also you can compile gcc and itself on it. Thats quite a sign of maturity. Its not quite useful yet, but its getting there.

Re:But it does help a Win32 Port of KDE

[cbreaker]

That's good to hear. It would be pretty neat to have a "drop-in" replacement for Windows. If it worked good enough and didn't get shut down (read: sent to court until bankrupt) then I'd see no reason why a driver developer wouldn't do at least rudimentary checks to see if their driver ran on this thing.

We'll have to wait and see what happens.

Re:why?

[fault0]

> but it seems like a lot of effort for a small result.

Note that this isn't a port that relies on X11, but is native. Freeing KDE of X11 dependencies should allow KDE to be easier ported to Windows (without, ehm.. Cygwin)

Also, porting Konqueror seems to have been a first step in porting the rest of KDE.

From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[Inoshiro]

"- it was designed from the ground up and is conceptually sound, unlike mozilla which was a hack job on top of netscape's browser"

Nope. They dropped the old code and started from scratch a long, looong time ago.

"- unlike other browsers (mozilla, IE), it was designed using 'mature' technology (HTML4, CSS, etc.) and does not have nearly as many compatibility woes as IE, nor as many add-on hacks, as the other browsers had, due to changing stnadards over the years (in other words: it's a newer, fresher code base)"

Nope. Konq doesn't pass basic CSS tests that I have written. Mozilla does.

"- unlike mozilla/firebird, I can use it for hours/days with many pages open (15+) without the entire affair slowing to a crawl and/or dying"

Nope in my case. I'm not sure your problem, but I have no problem with my 2-3 windows with about 7-15 tabs each, open for the entirety my computer is on. The average between reboots on my workstation is a month. I'll close Mozilla to update to a more recent nightly, but that's about it. My hardware isn't insane either --- XP 1700+ w/ 768mb RAM.

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[nitehorse]

Actually....

If you'd bother to use a version that isn't almost a year old (hint: KDE 3.2, we've had alpha and even beta releases out for a few weeks now) you'd know that it does pass. At least, it sure looks like it does to me. Granted, the CSS isn't quite perfect (the floating box in particular looks like its offset from the right edge is incorrect) but Konq is surprisingly good these days. And rendering errors like this one are getting fixed all the time.

-clee

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[Zork the Almighty]

I'm using Konqueror from KDE 3.1.4 and your test seems to work perfectly.

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[Asdex]

> If you'd bother to use a version that isn't almost a year
> old (hint: KDE 3.2, we've had alpha and even beta
> releases out for a few weeks now) you'd know that it does
> pass.

Thats one of KDEs problems:

• It's a matter of one minute to update Mozilla.
• There is no possibility to update Konqueror 3.1 besides updating your whole desktop environment to a beta version.

So he doesn't use a version that is "lmost a year old" but he is using the newest stable release.

> but Konq is surprisingly good these days.

Look at the toolbar:
Why is Konqueror showing a "cut" icon on a webpage?

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[Darren Winsper]

I'll agree that Konqueror 3.2 is quite good, but I'd not say it's up to par with Mozilla. For example, why does this misrender in Konqueror, but works fine in Opera, Mozilla and even Safari?

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[d_i_r_t_y]

what's your point? IE has 90+% market share, so noone is going to look at your website if it doesn't look correct in IE (which i can see your src won't). so your point is moot...

konq is perfect for 99%+ of all websites i trawl... the biggest prob is user-agent spoofing idiotic internet banking sites and the like. and like a million others have already posted - the underlying kde ioslave architecture that gives every kde app the ability to utilise every network protocol under the sun is truly brilliant.

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[qed123]

I'm running KDE 3.2, and Konqueror doesn't seem to have any problem with your page.

I was pretty much running mozilla only since 1999, but with KDE 3.2 haven't used anything but Konq....I like it a lot.

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[TheRaven64]

Nope. Konq doesn't pass basic CSS tests that I have written. Mozilla does.

I can't comment on Konqueror directly, but Safari (which uses khtml renders your page perfectly (and the text looks a lot nicer than in the Mozilla screen shot you post).

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[Graff]

Konq doesn't pass basic CSS tests that I have written.

Well I'm not using Konqueror but I am using OmniWeb, which uses WebCore, a Mac OS X port of KHTML. That example CSS page renders exactly the same as your reference image. I also tried Safari, another browser which uses WebCore, and it also rendered you web page identically to your reference image.

So it seems that the KHTML-based applications can handle your CSS tests properly. Perhaps Konqueror is doing something odd that is causing problems with CSS or maybe there is some other kind of interference with the test but I wouldn't dismiss it entirely. Bug it to the Konqueror people, I'm sure it's something that can be fixed up quick if KHTML is already handling this stuff properly.

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[jo_ham]

Safari on OS X (v 1.1) does pass those CSS tests in full though. I didn't see a ref image for that in your directory. I can send a screenshot if you like.

In fact, screenshot here.

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[Tukla]

Why is Konqueror showing a "cut" icon on a webpage?

Maybe because some Web pages have editable text? For example, this comment page. When I highlight static text, only the Copy icon becomes active. When I highlight text in the comment field, both Copy and Cut become active. Would you prefer to have a toolbar that keeps adding and subtracting icons depending on what you click on? What a nightmare.

(Posted with Konqueror 3.1.4)

Re:From good to troll in 3 bullet points.

[Asdex]

> Maybe because some Web pages have editable text?

Why do you need a Cut Icon on editable web pages?
Most web pages are not editable. Some are. At some of those you need to cut text. That's why there is a "edit/cut" menu.

No other webbrowser does have a cut or copy or paste icon on the default tool bar.
That just makes konquerors toolbar look unprofessional and crowded.

A couple corrections

[gad_zuki!]

> You sound like a troll (nobody mentioned anything about a full-tilt KDE port on OS X, fool)

You call him a troll, yet you're name-calling?

> it has more/better features than mozilla (fish://, file://, ftp:// smtp://, etc. etc.)

Hold on, many people here habitually abuse MS for making the "browser the OS" and certainly can spot feature-creep a mile away, but when it comes to KDE's browser its suddenly okay? I like having a whole seperate browser for web and use Nautilus for file browsing. Keeping WAN and Local/LAN seperate is a big plus in mine, and many other's books.

>unlike other browsers (mozilla, IE), it was designed using 'mature' technology

How isn't Moz 'mature?'

>unlike mozilla which was a hack job on top of netscape's browser

This is just untrue. The Moz team gutten NS to the point where they were writing just about everything from scratch.

>unlike mozilla/firebird, I can use it for hours/days with many pages open (15+)

I can do this easily with Moz/Firebird on both Win and Linux. I average 20 tabs and half of them are auto-refreshing every few minutes and this is far from a top of the line machine.

Re:A couple corrections

[oddfox]

gad_zuki! said:

Hold on, many people here habitually abuse MS for making the "browser the OS" and certainly can spot feature-creep a mile away, but when it comes to KDE's browser its suddenly okay? I like having a whole seperate browser for web and use Nautilus for file browsing. Keeping WAN and Local/LAN seperate is a big plus in mine, and many other's books.

I agree with everything else in your post (Esp. about Moz/Firebird and it's excellent performance regarding tabbed browsing) except for this snippet. The reason people complain about Microsoft shoving Internet Explorer down their throat is because, quite frankly, it's impossible to remove it. Konqueror is not a required part of any KDE desktop. Konqueror also is quite transparent, you can use it for practically any network protocol (I enjoy using it as my FTP client, myself) just as easily as you can use it for local file management. Your Linux system won't barf all over itself if you don't have Konqueror, and there's nothing that requires you use Konqueror. You could just as easily use Nautilus in KDE (Although as far as I know, Nautilus will assimilate your desktop. I think you can disable this in the Nautilus preferences, tho), or Rox Filer. Ditto for separate web browsers as well as FTP clients (And other misc. softwares).

I think you may have been a little too quick to think that they Free/OSS communities are being hypocritical towards Microsoft when it comes to the whole IE integration thing relating to the KDE and Konqueror stuff. It may be a little bit of a feature creep, but there is no software shipped with the base KDE distribution that can handle the tasks that Konqueror handles. Besides, KDE doesn't have a monopoly to abuse, and Konqueror doesn't break standards like crazy, either, hehe.

Re:A couple corrections

[Spoing]

1. > it has more/better features than mozilla (fish://, file://, ftp:// smtp://, etc. etc.)

   Hold on, many people here habitually abuse MS for making the "browser the OS" and certainly can spot feature-creep a mile away, but when it comes to KDE's browser its suddenly okay? I like having a whole seperate browser for web and use Nautilus for file browsing. Keeping WAN and Local/LAN seperate is a big plus in mine, and many other's books.

While I agree with all your other points, this one isn't right.

Konqueror provides a good view to KDE services but is not required to run KDE.

IE provides little except for browsing, yet it can't be removed without extreme pain and even then it's still around in parts and pieces.

You can use KDE without Konqueror by simply ignoring it...you can't use Windows without IE poking it's nose up -- sometimes in the strangest places.

My biggest complaint about IO Slaves is that they often aren't easy enough to use...not that they (or Konqeuror) get in the way.

Re:A couple corrections

[CAIMLAS]

You call him a troll, yet you're name-calling?

Yeah, what of it? Maybe my logic is flawed but calling a troll a fool doesn't necessitate me a troll as well (that is what you're implying, isn't it?)

Hold on, many people here habitually abuse MS for making the "browser the OS" and certainly can spot feature-creep a mile away, but when it comes to KDE's browser its suddenly okay? I like having a whole seperate browser for web and use Nautilus for file browsing. Keeping WAN and Local/LAN seperate is a big plus in mine, and many other's books.

Am I 'many people'? No, I am a single person with a mind an opinion of my own. Is konqueror being made "the OS"? No, it is simply a browser for a desktop environment that runs on X, which just happens to run on an operating system.

As far as "keeping the browser seperate", it still does that. Don't want fish, ftp, smb, etc. built into your browser? Disable them - they're just I/O slaves. (That's something like a plugin, fyi.) The problem with IE in this respect is that it's fully integrated - a single cancerous component - that can't be removed and has a plethora of security problems that are frequently exploited. Konqueror isn't plagued by any of these things.

Why do you have to be so negative? I was simply pointing out what I personally like about konq.

Does the file manager work?

[incom]

Or just the web browser. Konq is an excellent file manager, and would be a great benefit for when you need to do alot of file management on OSX. Finder imho isn't quite as intuitive or quick to work with.

Re:why?

[Ambassador Kosh]

Konqueror does all of that because it is not a file manager, web browser etc. It is a kpart embedder. It embeds khtml to do html rendering and other stuff for other things. I can embed kate, kword, kpdf etc for other things. It can speak all of those protocols because every kde app can. You can use sftp, smb, imap, pop3 etc from ANY kde application. Although why you would want to open a pop3 connection from kword I am not sure but it does work. Any file dialog box in kde can use any of the io slaves.

That also means that you can paste any url that kio understand into a file upload box in a webpage and it will deal with it and have the webpage the content of that url. That saves such a large ammount of time doing web apps and lots of other things. Give an sftp url to some data and just have it load it up.

Re: Apple needs to catch up to Linux in some respe

[Graymalkin]

Macintosh as a platform would have died a long time ago if it wasn't for those greedy shareware developers you have such disdain for. Some of the best pieces of software available for the Mac have been shareware applications. Most of these applications don't force you to buy them in order to get full functionality. Some people want too much money for ridiculously simple applications but you're under no obligation to purchase or use them.

Besides Mac-only shareware there's literally thousands of OS programs available through Fink, GNU-Darwin, and Darwin Ports. If one of these free as in speech apps works better or as well as a shareware one use it instead of the shareware, vote with your wallet.

There's also plenty of choice in your Mac specific applications. There's several browsers, mail clients, IM programs, media players, editors, and whatever else you want. Not all of them are free or open source but your options are definitely not limited to commercial products.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[ColMustard]

I personally can't repeat the same thing with Microsoft because "the fact that [Microsoft] makes good products" doesn't sit well with me.

Furthermore, you have strayed from the topic at hand. I don't know why you just told me your OS preference; I certainly don't care. The point of my post was not to put Apple upon the pedestal as the perfect example of how a company should be run, though you seem to think I said something like that. Apple does no wrong in my book? That's putting a lot of words in my mouth which have never been there.

So, since you seem to have become lost, let's reiterate the point:
Apple has the right to make and sell their products to whoever is willing to pay for them. You also have the right to bash Apple because they don't do everything you want as a company. And then I have the right to explain to you why they do the things they do and proceed to read your nonsensical replies.

What else is a free country for?

Re: Apple needs to catch up to Linux in some respe

[diamondsw]

It's early, and I'm going to bed. This post will be semi-disorganized and probably a bit flaming. Sorry, I'm tired. However...

1) Files fragment. It happens in any file system. If your file system is well designed, it undoes this as possible. Panther does this. As a result, no appreciable fragmentation should occur (others can fill in the technical details). So what that article was trying to tell you is the file system is automatically defragmented every time an open() call is made.

2) Yes, there's lots of shareware. And a lot of commercial software. And a whole lot of freeware (check www.macupdate.com). Guess what - Linux has only the freeware category in any significant sense. And OS X can run that exact same free software via X11 in the vast majority of cases, just as you do on Linux today. Not to mention that the vast majority of shareware is $20 or less - only a couple things like GraphicConverter cost more. (Horrors, some people spend years of their life and just *don't* want to give it all away for free. They do exist.) Not to mention that Apple bundles a truckload of free software (as in beer, folks) that quite frankly kicks the butt of any open source software I've seen (I'm thinking iTunes/iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD at the moment, not Mail/Address Book). And if you want any of the other stuff, it's readily installable by fink or by compiling it yourself. I already installed my own customized wget and other things.

3) Lack of choice is deliberate. Yes, occasionally it's annoying, no doubt about it. However, I believe the excesisve choice is a major criticism of Linux (and the associated division of labor and lack of focus/coherence). As many have pointed out, why does KDE include several duplicate programs for each basic function, rather than provide a good default up front. You want choice, you can get it very easily on your own (whether by tweak, compile, or download). There are a lot of simple users out there that really, honestly, don't want choice. They want what's included to work and do what they want to do. Apple does that in spades.

I'm going to bed. grump grump grump...

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[grubi]

Something tells me you don't actually have any friends, hence the weird obsession with other peoples' computers.

What an odd piece of work you are. It's late, though. and your mom will be pissed if she finds out you're using her Packard Bell on AOL this late at night. Tsk tsk... Off to bed, baby boy.

Hey that look like baghira

[anirban]

Hey the GUI is totally look like baghira with Aqua Msk window decoration & graphite icons sets.

So I think baghira is cool o the KDE is

Re:But why bother?

[oddfox]

Safari runs perfectly well, but so does Konqueror, and it does a lot more (Biggest: File management). It's a matter of choice, as usual.

Re:Why isn't X11 running?

[oddfox]

They're just small. I have to wonder why he didn't bother to make them readable. Maybe he resized the screenshot or something? Whatever...

P.S. -- Linux has had great fonts ever since freetype2 2.1.5 was released. You should try it sometime. Or take a peek of one of my old desktops.

OT: menu bar weather app

[henben]

I'm looking forward to using Konqueror on OS X, if only because the file transfer and browsing options sound interesting. Using the Finder for FTP seems to be unaccountably slow and prone to random disconnects. Anyway, the thing that really interested me in this story was the screenshot - looking at someone else's desktop gives me the prurient thrills that I imagine some people get out of Hello! magazine. Does anyone know what that little menu bar weather indicator is? I've seen similar desktop things, but they're not really worth it on a 12" screen. Ta.

Re:OT: menu bar weather app

[Dr. Sp0ng]

It's called WeatherPop. It's on VersionTracker.

I disagree.

[Inoshiro]

It's been 2 years since that KDE screenshot was taken, and the Konq I have on my KDE desktop (v3.1.4) renders the same -- incorrectly!

Having bugs fixed in beta versions is no excuse to not have the fix in the stable version. Far too often in OSS do programmers think it's ok to only maintain an unstable tree. Most people (especially the end users we want not using other software) won't run unstable software.

My stable Mozilla has rendered it correctly for years now. Konq's CSS is only surprisingly good if your nearest competitor is a bugfest like WinIE or Lynx.

It's not.

[Inoshiro]

The right-margin offset is misrendered, the font padding on the box is miscalulated (also a bug in Mozilla), and the tooltip for the mouse-over links is bugged (it has a very strange wrap column).

This is a lot better than the old KDE (which totally broke on the header box, among other problems), but it still needs fixing. Naturally, the only way to get fixes in is to either do it myself or get people to notice the bugs on /. ;)

Re:It's not.

[GrouchoMarx]

I just checked on my Konqueror 3.1.5 (which is the current version out of Debian Unstable as of a few days ago, and no, KDE itself is still at 3.1.4, I don't get it either). Comparing it against my Mozilla 1.5 on Windows 2000 and your reference image, I notice the following differences:

- In Moz on Windows, there is an extra blank line at the top of the right floaty. It's just a gray area there. Neither Konqueror nor the reference image have it, so it looks like a Moz/Win bug.

- The W3C logos have link highlight boxes around them in Moz/Win and your reference image, but not in Konqueror. According to your code, it's not specified whether they should be there or not. I don't know off hand whether there's supposed to be one if not specified in the code according to the spec, but I know I far prefer it without the bloody boxes. :-)

So at least on my Konqueror 3.1.5 (not a beta, it's the current stable public release) Konqueror actually works better than Moz. yay. hth.

Re:It's not.

[An Anonymous Hero]

- In Moz on Windows, there is an extra blank line at the top of the right floaty. It's just a gray area there. Neither Konqueror nor the reference image have it, so it looks like a Moz/Win bug.

Same on Mac. Actually that extra grey line comes up when mousing over that floaty in Moz (1.6a, 20031029); everything's fine in Safari (1.1, v100).

Inoshiro might want to file a bug.

Your version of Konq has a new bug, too.

[Inoshiro]

My v3.1.4 correctly doesn't let the floatbox overlap the right-hand side border, but yours miscalculates (probably related to the on-going margin bug in Konq that's still there 2 years after I noticed it) and has overlap that shouldn't be there.

A disapointing regression :-/

Re:Your version of Konq has a new bug, too.

[JimDabell]

I'm not getting the overlap here with 3.1.94, perhaps nitehorse is using an older beta.

On the other hand, Firebird 0.7 has a weird "jumping margin" bug that increases the top margin of the floatbox when you hover over one of the links.

Re:Your version of Konq has a new bug, too.

[byolinux]

Looks okay in Safari, I think

smb browsing on OS X

[daveinthesky]

I've found Sharity to be quite useful. It's "free" for single-server home use too....

Hey cool...

[FatSean]

Wonder if KDE via X on windows will be any snappier than it is under linux. I'll have to give it a shot.

Re:Hey cool...

[rixstep]

It doesn't use X. Not what I can see. It would appear to use Carbon.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[Lispy]

Except that its OT and seriously ugly. Ill wait for freedesktop.org Xserver instead.

Progress?

[startxxx]

Was it really needed by the OSX users? like, I still find nautilus & konqueror far less useful then Windows Explorer. Instead of porting it to propietry platforms I'd put more effort on solving urgent issues. What a young (feature and usability wise) project really needs is alot of feedback and reports fom users and for that, I think the linux community is enough for now.

Re:why help a megacorporation like apple?

[ColMustard]

Yes it was. I'm trying to take this one step at a time for you. But I think you're ready. My other point was (as you should have read in my original reply) that what this person does with his time is not anyone else's business.

And again, you have the right to mock him. And I have the right to mock you for wasting your time mocking him. I can also mock myself for wasting my time to mock you for mocking him.

And around and around we go.

Re:Why?

[benjamindees]

Does anyone else find it humorous that:

KDE users want Gnome apps like Evolution, Gaim, Gimp and Win/Lin cross-platform apps like OpenOffice and Mozilla and generally eschew the KDE apps.

OSX users seem to want KDE apps (Safari, KOffice).

I'm beginning to think it's just a ploy to sell more RAM.

Re:It figures

[Ranger Rick]

Just to check, I went into dselect, and lo and behold, KDE, pre-built, as binaries, is available.

Try a "fink info bundle-kde" and look at who the maintainer is. ;)

This port uses Qt/Mac instead of Qt/X11... there's a big difference.

Re:Why isn't X11 running?

[Ranger Rick]

I didn't bother to do anything, I was just happy it ran. Making things pretty happens later.

Project page here:

[IceFox]

For those that would like to help out there is a project page (wiki) here: KDE On Darwin

-Benjamin Meyer

Re: Apple needs to catch up to Linux in some respe

[Johnny Mnemonic]

First, how much catching up Mac OS X still has to do in some respects to Linux.

Agreed. But sometimes it's about knowing where to look--naturally, the favorite haunts of the Mac community aren't well known outside of the community itself. Versiontracker is the sourceforge of the Mac community--but much of it is indeed shareware, not freeware. Mac OS X Hints serves up nice digestible bits of HOWTO for us; especially appreciated is when a Unix LongBeard chimes in with his experience.

For example, one article in the German magazine "MacWelt" talks about defragmenting the harddisk (!) with Panther.

I don't know what they were talking about specifically, but defragging isn't necessary under Panther--apps self-optimize at launch ("Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering"?). More from Apple on the topic of defragging in 10.2-.3. I don't know how that compares to Linux.

multiple desktops

It would be nice to see good multiple desktop support in OS X; the community feeling is that Apple doesn't implement it out of fear of confusing the grannies. However, Versiontracker lists a number of Virtual Desktop managers; folks like CodeTek's (if you're paying) and I've used DesktopManager and liked it (for free). Not quite as robust as the options under Linux, but closer.

As for your other points: yeah, lots of shareware and not freeware. That's changing, some, as more and more Linux folks try OS X and re-implement what they liked in Linux on OS X; there's a fair few free projects for OS X (Fink is a good example). And yeah, the One Apple Way: that's rather the point. Jobs, right or wrong, thinks that the ability to chose breeds confusion in the consumer and is more difficult to support; look up the history of theming in OS 9 if you're interested. I don't know if I agree, personally--I think The One Way has it's points, but I think that alienated developers and tinkerers in the process, and I don't know which is better on balance.

Finally, But when you get past the cool design and ignore the far, far superior multimedia tools, Tux can hold its beak high and proud. Apple is going to have to peddle really hard if they want to continue to want money for their OS: Apple doesn't, really, want to charge for the OS. They want to sell hardware, and the OS is a loss leader for that. How many stand-alone boxes of the OS do you think that they sell? Here's a clue: besides a EULA, each install has no DRM, not a serial number, nothing. They ask you to please not install a single copy on more than one machine, but take no action to prevent it. And don't forget about the Open Source Darwin; this gives smarter minds than mine the opportunity to bring what they love about Linux to OS X.

Um... I thought safari WAS konqueror

[A55M0NKEY]

Isn't safari just a spinoff of konqueror anyway???

Re:why?

[Reblet]

I don't think the important achievement is in the fact that the we now have another browser on Mac OS X, because there is enough choice out there, nor is the additional feauture set of Konqueror important to me.

What IS important is that some people have figured out how to isolate KDE from X11, which sets a precedent for porting other KDE apps to Mac OS X. Programs such as KOffice or Kopete do seems worth the bother to me.

Reblet

Re: Apple needs to catch up to Linux in some respe

[MoneyT]

i'm curious as to what system you're using where files never fragment?

As people have already pointed out, there are a few multiple desktop options availible for OS X, as well as Expose, which helps aliviate the need for multiple desktops.

Sure there are plenty of shareware apps that are overcharged for, but there are also many that are well worth the money, and just as many that are free, or non-enforced shareware. Try www.tucows.com and www.versiontracker.com for OS X apps of all types. Not to mention with X11 and fink, just about all of your free linux apps will run in OS X too.

As for the lack of choice, I seriously suggest you check some of the software sites before you say that again. There are lot's of choices, it just so happens many users like Apple's choices best.

Finaly, Apple isn't much in the business of profiting off the OS. The OS sells the hardware, which is where they really get their money.

Re:Why isn't X11 running?

[oddfox]

Always a good way of thinkin' about these things. Get the work done and have fun later.

Congrats!

[admiralfrijole]

Wow, as soon as the battery is charged on my TiBook, I'm going to talk to ben/rangerrick and get this running just for the hell of it.

congrats to rangerrick and i hope that KOffice isn't too hard

~Ian

my ass "just works" too

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

Can we please stop it with the "OS X *just works*" posts? And the "beauty of OS X" posts too? I think we all get the point already. geez! I'd rather stick to an OS that I don't want to f**k.

-exasperated rationalizing Linux geek stuck on an x86 box

Kre:Kdon't kyou kean

[LPetrazickis]

I kthink kyou kmeant:
Kwatch kout kthere. Khave kyou knot kheard ke knews? KSCO kjust kiscovered kthat kthey kown Ke Ksimpsons. Kthey khave kalready kanged ktheir kname kto KSKO kand kare kemanding ka $200k kpayment kfor kevery "Komedy K".
;)

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[MoneyT]

Which Linux is the one true linux that counts? And for someone that doesn't care about a $130 OS from a company like Apple (hint: Linux companies make money too), you sure spend a lot of time trolling this post. Feeling inadequate are we?

Puny mortal

[LPetrazickis]

As for me, GNU/iKant believe it.;)

Re:why?

[abigor]

I knew I could use the pop3 ioslave from Konq, but from Kword...? I had no idea. It's a weird, but good (?) demonstration of KDE's modularity.

Same bug is in Mozilla.

[Inoshiro]

I'm not sure when the bug became added. 2003122707 has it as well. Might be time for another visit to Bugzilla :)

Same margin bug as in Konq.

[Inoshiro]

The right-hand text should all be indented left the same amount as the em width of the floating menu box. This is because (if the page is longer or you resize) the float menu is pinned, and will always remain in the same spot relative to the rest of the page. Most browsers get that wrong, too ;)

I must say, the text looks pretty decent with the fonts Safari uses.

Good for IE.

[Inoshiro]

Only by having websites which look broken in IE will people change from IE. The same way people only changed away from Netscape 4 because in broke on a whole buttload of websites.

Personally, I don't give a shit about IE. I use Mozilla, my friends use Safari or Opera or Firebird or Mozilla. There are lots of alternatives, and most of them are better than IE. Plus, none of them have known security problems of the severity of IE!

I think that writing kick-ass websites using standards compliant markup and CSS is a much better way of encouraging people to be browser agnostic than you think. Banks want stuff that works on all their customers' PCs -- using well established standards (CSS1 is from 1997, for crying out loud!) is that solution.

You're welcome to your opinion (hey, this is why my CSS doesn't force on/off link text or underlines, I want the end-user to decide!), but I'm going to stick with mine ;)

Regarding links.

[Inoshiro]

I leave the option of underlines/outlines to the user agent. Personally, I have playing the game of magic-mouse-cursor where I have to sweep the entire page with my mouse to find out what's clickable and what's not. Mozilla's user CSS rocks in this regard (Konq works great for it, too) in that I can force it on. This breaks a bunch of silly pixel-perfect layouts, though ;) But I don't have to spend 5 minutes figuring out what's a link and what's not on each page.

I really hate that. Underlined links were created for good reason :p

OSS != Linux

[TheRaven64]

So when will apple port something to Linux? The iapps will be a good start. :rollseye:

Apple does give back to the OSS community. They contribute to the GNU project (gcc), to KDE (KHTML upgrades for WebKit have been ported back) and they even provide kernel-level things (the HFS+ filesystem driver for FreeBSD comes from Darwin). Why should they give anything to Linux? Linux is just a kernel, and has contributed nothing to Apple...

Re:Why?

[Reziac]

Konversely, my liking for Konqueror derives from the fact that it IS simple compared to Mozilla etc. I don't think it's bad to have feature-rich apps, but it's also good to have the choice of a simpler app, for those who want or need it.

Re: Apple needs to catch up to Linux in some respe

[caseyc]

Second, it is depressing to see how obsessed with money the Mac people still are.

Yeah, tell me about it. But when the landlord shows up asking for my rent, telling him "it is depressing to see how obsessed with money you are" simply doesn't work.

KOffice would be great!

[abischof]

Though I'm pleased with the Konqueror port (for the geek value, if nothing else), I'm particularly excited about the intentions to port KOffice as well. I have a 15" PowerBook and I was dismayed to discover that there just isn't much in the way of free office suites for OS X :-/.

Sure, there's OpenOffice.org for OS X, but it feels more like a halway-port since it requires X11 and it's stuck with Unix widgets. Really, I like OpenOffice.org as much as the next guy -- I run it exclusively on my Windows box -- but it just feels halfway-finished on the Mac (and a native OS X port is only coming in 2006 or so).

So, after setting aside OpenOffice.org, I looked to other options.. and it appears that MS Office is just about the only other choice. And that's about $200 (and, no, I'm not going to cheat and buy the academic or government editions). So, a native port of KOffice to OS X would be a real breakthrough.

Re:KOffice would be great!

[Ranger Rick]

Well then check out the screenshots. ;)

I reserve judgement

[Inoshiro]

Until I can get screenshots showing that it respects all styles, has proper magining, and has a proper respect for the pinned menu. Safari is broken the same way Konq is, so I expect Safari to be broken the same way as well.

iCab rocks...

[ChristTrekker]

I forgot about cookie and image filters. Thanks for the reminder. I agree, they are some of the most advanced/flexible I've seen.

I'd be happy with complete and solid CSS1 from any browser. I think Mozilla and Opera are very very close here. CSS2 would be icing.

Are you on OS X? My experience with iCab has all been under 8.1, and it's always been a little crashy for me. Maybe it's better with X?

Re:iCab rocks...

[goljerp]

Yep, I'm running OS 10.2.8, and iCab 2.9.6. iCab crashes on me about once every two weeks. I think I'm fairly hard on it - I have 7 tabs open at the moment, and I usually keep iCab running a week at a time. (I shut down my computer every week.)

Safari (and OmniWeb) is just as broken.

[Inoshiro]

No point repeating myself why.

Safari (and OmniWeb) is just as broken.

[Inoshiro]

No point repeating myself why

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

1. Not a stupid fuck. Tooo bad for you.

2. Linux is hte only OS that counts? By whose standard exactly?

3. OS X costs $129, unless you get a discount, like I did. Panther cost me $39. XP still costs over $200.

4. My real last name is, if you'd bother to check my profile, is Gruber. So yes, grubi is a legitimate nickname. Seeing as my name is plastered all over my profile and my websites, I'd hardly say I'm "anonymous". Feh.

Re:Great. An also-ran browser on an also-ran OS.

[grubi]

Burden of prrof: you state something, you'd better be prepared to back it up.

"Everybody knows" is not an argument; it's bullshit.

And if the equation is "simpel," maybe you'd be able to reveal this magic equation?

Port this!

[rune2]

Ok guys my Commadore 64's waiting! (or would that be Kommadore 64?) It ought to ported any time now...

Not so odd

[fm6]

Cygwin takes some of the work out of making Unix stuff work on Windows, but it's still pretty hard.

Also, there are a lot of practical issues with X under Cygwin. It's flaky, and your X desktop runs in its own window. Windows users aren't going to be running a lot of X apps until support for X becomes more reliable and more integrated.