Aaron Seigo On KDE SC 5.0 — and What Getting There Means

An anonymous reader writes "After years of focusing on further improving KDE4, two weeks ago the developers of the free desktop announced the next big step for their project: KDE Frameworks 5.0. But as long-time developer — and Plasma team leader — Aaron Seigo points out in an interview with derStandard.at/web, the source-incompatible changes shall be held to a minimum. He also calls Frameworks 5.0 only the 'first step;' new Applications and Workspace releases are to follow later. Seigo goes on to talk about their chances in the mobile market with Plasma Active and further areas of collaboration with the other big free desktop: GNOME."

Comments

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[gatkinso]

Well, I was a KDE 3.x hold out for the longest time... but then I gave it a chance again.

I am glad I did.

It really has improved greatly since the 4.0 debacle. Try it, from one 4.0 hater to another.

QML

[Psychotria]

Aaron spend a lot of time speaking about a transition, in the long-term, to QML (I had to look it up) in the interview. He mentioned that it makes prototyping interfaces quicker, and I assume that also means implementation of the GUI aspects would therefore be quicker also. But I am confused. Is QML just for GUI stuff, or do you write the entire application using it? What other advantages over C++ does it offer?
Cheers

Re:QML

[Kjella]

QML is pretty much like HTML/CSS+Javascript, except that you can do more Javascript magic to manipulate the UI. In theory the whole application can be written in Javascript, but I'd say normally just for the UI or things closely related to the UI. Personally I consider it a step backwards, to me it's more like trying to use web app tech to build a "real" app. I always thought that the only reason you'd want to use a declarative UI is because you need to send it as one big HTTP page, rather than set one and one property as you can do locally. To me at least the whole system seems way less intuitive. With an imperative system I always call setWidth() to set the width, in a declarative UI it's set in the declaration one way and I have to change that property some other way. Maybe I'm wrong but IMO it's throwing away the best part Qt has.

Re:QML

[suy]

QML is just for GUI stuff, but you can add logic to the interface in JavaScript. Some people are claiming that Qt is losing its C++ roots, but, IMHO, they are wrong. QML will replace the UI files that Qt Designer created, but with lots of advantages. First, QML can be written by hand, and also with a very smart QML Designer that only modifies the lines that you change. That means that designers and coders can easily work together, and that changes to the UI are readable in the history of the project.

The other important benefit of QML, is that is really fun to use, and you can create compelling user interfaces with a fraction of the time. Then you can plug your C++ very easily to do the heavy lifting. The thing that makes Qt Quick excel, is that you can mix QML and C++ very easily throught the Qt property system and signals and slots.

Re:QML

[suy]

With QML you can do "width: parent.width / 2", or whatever other expression, and the width is now bound (not assigned) to the width of the parent. IMO is waaaay better than defining a width, and having to create a bunch of logic to make sure the width stays the amount you wanted in the first place. For user interfaces is a great thing, and other technologies are already doing it (Clutter, JavaFX). I think that the way that works in Qt is pretty good, because you integrate with imperative code in a very convenient way.

Re:QML

[EvilNTUser]

You misunderstand how QML is supposed to be used. It's nothing at all like building a web app. Its biggest problem right now is that there aren't any good books about how to use it correctly, and what your overall design philosophy should be.

If we are to stay with the web analogy, in terms of usefulness QML/C++ is to plain C++ like CSS/HTML is to plain HTML. Positioning, reacting to changes, tasteful animations etc. are all extremely simple in a declarative UI. Explaining how to use it would be too much for one post, but it's becoming so powerful you'll soon be able to manipulate your UI using shaders. I've added comments to explain the basic QML, but the original article is here.

Image { // Create a new image object
width: 180
height: 180
source: "winter.jpg"

Text { // Create a new text object parented to the image object
id: theItem // Give this object an id to refer to
anchors.fill: parent // Automatically and constantly adjust to the size of the parent
horizontalAlignment: Text.AlignHCenter
verticalAlignment: Text.AlignVCenter
font.pixelSize: 120
font.family: "Times"
color: "blue"
text: "Qt"
}

ShaderEffectItem { // Create a new ShaderEffectItem object
anchors.fill: parent // Automatically and constantly adjust to the size of the parent

property variant source: ShaderEffectSource {
sourceItem: theItem // The object that the shader will draw
smooth: true
hideSource: true
}

property real amplitude: 0.02 // Define new variables for the shader to interact with.
property real frequency: 20
property real time: 0
NumberAnimation on time { loops: Animation.Infinite; from: 0; to: Math.PI * 2; duration: 600 } // Animate the time variable. You can also make animations that automatically animate objects' size changes when you do, say, width = 300.
fragmentShader: " // Embedded fragment shader code
uniform highp float amplitude;
uniform highp float frequency;
uniform highp float time;
uniform sampler2D source;

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Kjella]

Like it or not, tablets are merely a fad. They have no staying power.

And I assume you're basing all this wonderful market research on yourself or a small group of like-minded friends? They sold 9.25 million iPads last quarter - for comparison they sold 3.95 million Macs. It's as much a fad as the iPhone, maybe you haven't found a use for it but the market has. The problem with Gnome and KDE chasing after the tablet market is that they think they'll be a "player" along with iOS and Android. If anything I think they have less chances of succeeding there on the desktop, they're ignoring the 1% desktop market share they have and chasing 1% of the mobile market. They haven't got the resources to run in two directions with two different teams, so they'll go halfway up both roads.

Re:Do we really need this?

[gweihir]

You can ignore it.

KDE? GNOME? I could not care less. I have been using fvwm for something like 20 years now and it still does everything I need. If you want to get work done, the GUI must under no circumstances get in your way. It must not hog your attention. It must not waste screen area. At the same time, it must provide what you need. I need 3x3 virtual desktops, edge-scroll, autoraiser, one icon box to the right, a clock and some mouse-menus. fvwm does this fast, efficient and in these 20 years I had to change the config-file once, when fvwm2 came out. Everything else is just a bit of cosmetics now and then.

I do not understand why people get excited about the Windows GUI either. It is decades outdated, slow, inflexible, clutters your desktop, has no virtual screens out of the box, is hard to configure and is generally a study in how to not do it. The only thing I use it for is as a game launcher and it even manages to screw that up time and again. And this is the supposedly "best" what MS has to offer, namely Win7.

I think too many people forget that the PC is a tool and should work well as a tool. It can be fun to use too, but it is not a pacifier or mobile or other toy that has distracting people as its main task. In fact, when the GUI starts distracting, then it is massively misdesigned.

multi-desktop benefits

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's silly - there's plenty of work that is non-specific to any of the desktops, under the freedesktop moniker. The KDE and Gnome people are working on a wallet that works under both, but that also means it could work under XFCE and WindowMaker, etc.

Meanwhile, by not doing it all themselves (e.g. PAM integration) they have more resources to spend on KDE-specific stuff. This is a non-zero-sum game.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Grishnakh]

KDE would do quite well if they ignore this tablet fad. In a couple of years, when everybody has forgotten about tablets, KDE will be a far better desktop environment than it currently is.

Actually, I disagree somewhat. KDE actually doesn't have only one UI, it has at least two. There's a netbook version of it, which I believe (haven't tried it myself) on the newest KDE versions you can switch to pretty easily. As you might expect, it's designed for netbooks with small screens, and looks very different from traditional KDE. However, this doesn't detract from KDE, because the traditional mode is still there and still the default. Apparently, someone over there got the bright idea that they don't need to have the exact same interface on all devices, and can instead have different interfaces, optimized for different devices, while the architecture underneath is still the same. This of course flies in the face of Unity and Gnome3, where the devs think that everything needs to be exactly the same everywhere, whether you're using a 4" smartphone or a desktop with quad 30" monitors.

So there's really no reason (if they haven't done it already) that KDE can't support tablets as well; they'd just make that a different UI mode, similar to the netbook mode but optimized for touchscreens of course. As long as it defaults to the traditional mode when you install it on a regular desktop system, users who don't want a smartphone interface on their desktop PC aren't going to complain.

Just as you use different tools for different jobs, and just as sports cars have different controls than tractor-trailers (and also different from airplanes), computing devices should have different interfaces optimized for their input/output devices.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[Grishnakh]

That's utter bullshit. Good software arises from doing one thing, and only one thing, well. That's a cornerstone of the UNIX philosophy.

Supporting multiple desktops is the antithesis of that philosophy. All you end up doing is offering a shitty, compromised "solution" for everybody, rather than an optimal solution for a smaller number of users.

I think you meant "supporting multiple computing devices" or something like that, because having multiple virtual desktops is something most KDE users seem to appreciate.

Anyway, I disagree. KDE is more than just a UI, it's a lot of back-end systems as well; a subsystem for video/audio, a network manager, etc. Google for "KDE netbook"; KDE has another mode that's optimized for netbooks with their tiny screens, and it looks very different from regular KDE. Someone over there seems to realize that different computing devices need different UIs, and they've designed KDE to be able to change based on the device. There's no reason you can't have the same DE on different devices, but obviously it needs to be "skinned" differently: with a traditional interface for desktops with dual 30" screens, keyboards, and mice, and a totally different interface for tablets, and another interface for netbooks, etc. There's no reason these can't be combined into one DE, instead of forcing users to have a single interface that looks the same on all devices.

This is nothing new, and has always been part of KDE philosophy, and the same goes for GNOME. With KDE, the key was always configurability: you like window decorations that look like MacOS? You can choose that. You want the panel on the side or top or bottom, or ever two panels? You can choose that too. In GNOME, it's always been the opposite: we tell you what your desktop's going to look like because we know what's best for you, and you better like it. Gnome has long been removing configuration options because they're "too confusing".

So now that tablets and touchscreens are du jour, the Gnome fools think that we all need a UI that's, as you put it, a shitty, compromised solution for everybody, so that people don't get confused, whereas the KDE folks think that different devices can have different UIs, and that their users are smart enough to be able to adapt.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Grishnakh]

It's a little bit silly to complain about KDE's user interface when the things you complain about are user-configurable. Configurability has always been the hallmark of KDE; if you don't like the way it comes by default, there's probably a setting to change it under System Settings->Workspace Appearance and Behavior.

As the other posters said, there's actually three different modes for the K-menu: classic (which is probably what you want), the new one, and Lancelot. If you don't like the one set by default, try another one.

This isn't GNOME, where you're stuck with whatever the "usability experts" there think you should use, and aren't allowed to change anything. You can have it your way (with apologies to BK).

Plus, no one's forcing you to put plasmoids on your desktop. You can leave it totally blank if you want.