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KDE: Breaking the Network Barrier
comforteagle writes "In this month's KDE: From the Source, entitled Breaking the Network Barrier George Staikos takes us on a walk-through of KDE's desktop networking protocol handlers in the vein of sftp:// webdav:// and a few really nifty ones I wasn't aware of like info:/ perldoc:/ and tar:/. The entire KDE desktop environment is decked out like this, and as George puts it, 'Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X have a long way to go to catch up with the robust, transparent functionality that KDE has provided since version 2.0.'"
a walk-through of KDE's desktop networking protocol handlers in the vein of sftp:// webdav:// and a few really nifty ones I wasn't aware of like info:/ perldoc:/ and tar:/
Good thing the Christmas Island people have made it safe for the goatse:/ handler.
Trolling is a art,
My favorite one of course is pr0n:/. But for some reason I get buffer a overflow error - anyone know why? Anyone get pr0n2:/ working yet?
Says the person with the situational ethics sig.
Perhaps you should just read the article and not pay attention to the slashblurb? Whether it's Slashvertising or not, it's still interesting.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
This is one of the things that has impressed me most about KDE. The protocol handlers can make working with some of these protocols a piece of cake.
Also worth noting however, is the DCOP system integrated into KDE. The protocol handlers and DCOP can and do make a powerful combination.
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
That didn't take long. I was thinking that I would have to scroll down more then one page to see that garbage.
KDE is pretty damned easy to use and consistent too, it's just that not all applications are written in QT, just as not all Gnome apps are written in GTK. So, you get some apps that don't fall in line with the look and feel of the rest of the OS.
So is the way of the Linux desktop right now, and you can't single out KDE for that.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm a regular MacOS X user. And I love MacOS X, but there are some things that I miss about KDE. I try to follow KDE's progress even though it is not my desktop of choice these days.
The network transparency of KDE is brilliant. I'm not sure where the holdup for OSX is, but I would kill to be able to open a location with cmd-k, fish://user@myhost
I suspect that for Apple to add these bits would require some OS level work as well as some finder work. I hope they'd take that opportunity to update the finder to be a cocoa application. (As a side note, the Finder continues to bother me. My Mac savvy friends and I joke that the Finder, Mail.app, and Quicktime teams are Microsoft moles trying to take Apple down from the inside).
Anyone have any speculation as to why Apple hasn't already done some of the truly nifty network protocols? They've already got a finder view for FTP (which, unfortunately is dog-slow). Still, Apple has proven itself as a very agile software company. They've got a track record for adding features correctly and quickly, but the lack of an SSH handler is baffling to me.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
I thought this was pretty boring until I read this part:
Being able to do all of these things from a web browser is definitely a nice parlor trick, but in reality it's not a very easy way to use a computer. The real power of these protocol handlers is unleashed when they're used within various KDE applications. Any of these protocols can be used from the KDE file dialog, allowing files to be opened from or saved to any protocol!
I must say, as much as I don't really like KDE, that's really slick, and potentially very useful. Nice job guys.
(I'll even withold bashing and pro-gnome comments for the sake of sanity)
Maybe I don't know exactly what you mean, but all these protocols are already supported by various other clients. How is integrating it into the desktop asking for more hacking problems?
RTFA... This has nothing to do with which application to launch to deal with a specific file. You are thinking of file associations.
The KDE feature discussed here is a compatibility layer that allows users to treat a files located elsewhere as if it is on the local disk.
Instead of having to use sftp to download a file from a site, or wget to download a file from the webserver or even evolution to download a file from the mail server, you can just use one common interface for all files reguardless of their storage or access method.
This means a tighter and more consistent user experience.
SO there!
I don't get why it is useful to be able to type devices:// or whatever. For some of these protocols the ramifications are totally unclear: if i'd type pop3://myserver/mymailbox would that actually download my messages and effectively erase them from the server? The useful protocols are covered in Win(XP) very well, including the most useful (not mentioned in the article) : webdav over https.
This is vaguely reminiscient of the old Unix maxim, "Everything is either a file or a process," except that now KDE calls everything an URL.
/dev/extensions/audiocd/track1, /dev/extensions/sftp/, /dev/extensions/webdav, and so on? This type of a trick would have allowed these extensions to be used in any app that recognizes the file system, not only KDE type apps.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the old way of doing this be something like
What was the reason for not implementing these as devices?
Is the age-old question of 'does it belong in the kernel'. OSX's webdav and FTP client support accessable from the finder, the analogues to KDE's FTP and webdav protocol plugins, are in reality implemented in the kernel as a filesystem implementation, making them useable from *every*single* application running on the box, not just the ones linked into a particular application framework (KDE). The OSX implementations are truly remote filesystems, upon which I can 'cd', and 'vi' myself into oblivion.
But the downside is that these 'fancy' network filesystems are comparatively sparse relative to KDEs. And we're still waiting for, oh, say, webdav over SSL support (making it actually worthwhile for an intranet filesystem solution).
IF OSX could have retainted the 'filesystem drivers as userspace processes' mantra of the microkernel design philosophy, then we could have the best of both worlds. Especially if we could retain, say, HPFS, FFS, etc. as kernel resident drivers for efficency .
Geez... thirteen comments in and nothing positive to say about what the guy had to say. The fact of the matter is that on built in network transparency, KDE has no equal.
You don't really appreciate it until you use it and then forced to work without it. I present a real world example: a colleague wants some help with the IE CSS scrollbar colors. I open up KWrite, the "simple" text editor, select "Open" from the "File" and plug in the FTP url, with embedded password and all, into the open file dialog. A half a second later I was browsing their directory structure point-and-click in the open file dialog. I find the ".css" file and open it in the editor. I then make my simple changes and hit CTRL-S. The file was saved and uploaded back onto the web server in one simple keystroke combo. And that was it. Mind you all of this was done in KDE's most trivial of text editors and this feature is part of the desktop architecture meaning all KDE apps can employ this feature.
Try doing something like that with the default install of Windows/MacOSX/Be/whathaveyou. And that was the simplest of examples of the network transparency within KDE.
And that's just the network transparency aspect of it. The KIO architecture allows for some really amazing features on the local side as well. If you don't already know about the audiocd:/ slave then look it up or even use it. It will blow your mind.
Don't just take my word for it. Try it before you bash it. Please.
Some people would call such functionality within the desktop 'bloat'. I think before anybody says that, they first need to get themselves into the modern age. As the article mentioned, I find the fish:// handler to be one of the most oft-used handlers. Sure, I could scp remote files to the local machine, but it saves a lot of time to simply use fish:// in the file dialogs and such.
And it works *great* in Amarok, my audio player of choice. I no longer have to keep porting around my mp3 collection: I simply fish to my server and play them from there -- from anywhere. The only downfall, is that I need to force it to go to the next track after it gets to the end of a track, instead of automatically doing so, but it's a minor compared to the above ease-of-use.
No, but being about to type sftp:// into a browser does make KDE more network-transparent than OS X, which was the point of the article! God, I like OS X myself (like Classic even more), but the special moron task force of the Mac user community is really out in force today!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sure, using all these things from the browser interface is stupid, but you're missing the point. Konqueror is not a browser, it's merely a shell which is very nice for viewing webpages. You are not supposed to browse most of these things (nntp, mail etc.) from Konqueror, but you CAN simply because you can embed just about anything into Konqueror.
The useful thing is for example:
- Writing a webpage in Quanta and uploading it directly to your webserver simply by typing ftp://blahblah in the file save dialog.
- Streaming your movios from an smb share directly to Kaffeine without needing to use smbmount or anything similar. Or stream directly from http or ftp or ssh servers
- Opening an mp3 song from an audio CD. You simply type audiocd:// in the file open dialog and you'll be able to find a virtual mp3 on there. You open it from amaroK and you get an mp3 encoded on the fly. OK, not the most useful usage and not sure if it works, but you get the drift
The point is, if it works from Konqueror, it works from EVERYWHERE in KDE. Automatically.
I've used every version of Windows since 3.0. Actually, I've used Win far longer than KDE, including developing for it in a large company. It doesn't let me the use virtual desktops with magic borders. It doesn't let me do focus follows mouse. It doesn't let me split the panel into several parts so I can separate the taskbar from the application launch buttons. It doesn't have focus stealing prevention so some stupid dialog always interrupts my typing. It doesn't (to my knowledge) let me push current window to the background so I can type in it while it's covered by something else. I could go on. KDE lets me do all these things, making me much more productive. And it's not some hardcore TWM-like setup, it's full of pretty icons still, and features such as kioslaves which make my life much more easy.
Let's not even get into the illogical nonsense which Windows fans still defend as user-friendly. For example, if I minimise a program, there are THREE different places it can go. It can go to the taskbar (the only LOGICAL place), it can go to the system tray, or it can be minimised to one of the application launch buttons on the panels. Now how the hell is this friendly and useful, when I have to thing three times before finding my minimised program? Windows usability is SERIOUSLY overrated, get over it. Use KDE for a while and when you get used to it, you will see that it's a much more usable environment.