I would like to respond to both you and the posters who responded to you.
I know a lot about HTML. It *was* meant to be a simple markup language. It wasn't meant for design. Well...developers demanded more control over presentation and that is what we have. tags and tables and nested tables. Now anyone worth their salt knows that using these techniques cruddify the language. But in order to maintain *some* control over the display of web pages, they were needed.
That time is over. Cascading Style Sheets is definitely the answer. Konqueror is supposed to have full CSS compliance. Embedded web browsing was one of the things that CSS was *designed* for. You just need a user style sheet that overrides the formatting in the web page. I don't know if Konqueror supports user style sheets, but you'd think it should.
Here is definitely a must-read article for those who doesn't understand the power of stylesheets. Changing the size of images to 20x20 pixels. Decreasing font sizes. Getting rid of banner ads. These are ways to make web sites more usable for users on embedded devices. If you are a more traditional HTML coder, than you may find your web site rather mangled, but usable, on these platforms. But if you design your site using the web standards that were designed so that the web could be universally accessed, then you *can* give your web site a distinctive look and feel that your users will always recognize, even as your user moves from device to device.
Your design *will* be overrided by someone's browser, there is nothing you can do about it. It is part of the universallness of the web. For people who need larger font-sizes and contrasting colors, they will probably have user style sheets also. If you *work* with the standards, you can still influence the presentation of the web site.
But fixed-size, paper-like web displays are a thing of the past. Computers are far more flexible than paper.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head><title>HTML is easy</title></head>
<body>
<h1>HTML is easy</h1>
<p><acronym title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</acronym> is easy. It is a simple way of defining text. All you need to know is what your paragraphs, your headings, and your markup are and the HTML will do the rest. Javascript isn't suppose to be there...it is just rot for the web designers who want <em>Really Cool Effects</em>. Well...I suppose I haven't seen a good use for Javascript yet...I would love to be surprised.</p>
</body>
</html>
This is why we should avoid political discussion on Slashdot. Because we get Trolls like the parent poster spamming the forum with political propaganda of their party.
I could go through Grant's post and find the fallacies, untruths, and misrepresentations that he spewed; but that would be a waste of my time.
Regardless of which faction you decide you belong to based on political ideology, economic class, political party, hair color, or family pets; can't we all just agree to discuss based on the facts and well justified opinion with good geek talk. You know what I mean by geek talk...the kind of talk where you speak about the relative merits of the system, candidates, or political ideology.
Look...both candidates are messed up. That doesn't make the other candidate any better. Everything the parent poster said was anti-Bush. What? Can Bush do no wrong? Wait...my mistake. You were spewwing propaganda.
"But the FSF doesn't want me to distribute software privately, only publicly or not at all."
This statement is very wrong.
The only thing that the FSF want is that if you recieve a binary, that you have rights to the source code as well. If you didn't get the binary, you don't get the source code.
Simple, isn't it. You CAN distribute privately. You don't have to distribute publicly. It says this in the GPL!
HTML does links. Links are cool. They can link to all kind of content. That includes them pictures.
But the <img> tag has been depreciated in favor of the <object> tag, which is really impressive. I don't want to look up the spec right now but it goes somthing like this.
<object href="http://cool video of space shuttle launch" type="video"> <object href="shuttle.jpg" type="jpg"> Shuttle launched 20 Nov 1995</object> </object>
I am okay with pictures and multimedia as long as they are used to relay content. But they are not! Check out them roundy thingies in Slashdot's headings on the front page. They are images and they are only so that the page looks all roundy!
The object tag allows the browser to pick a method for viewing the content based upon its capabilites or user preference. But why would a web designer do that when it can do:
<object href="cool splash page" type="flash animation">Sorry...but this page requires Flash 4, Shockwave, IE or Netscape 4, Windows Media Player, and 800x600 resolution</object>
Um, I don't think this was a white paper. I think it was an idea...perhaps a proposal to astronomers.
I don't think it matters what OS they use or what database system they use, etc. etc. until they start implementing it.
I think the astronomers would very much appreciate this use of technology. It is one of the purist uses of technology I have known.
But I am interested in details as well though. So for those of you who specialize in this sort of stuff, how would you go about implementing this sort of system? Would GNU/Linux be able to handle it?
Re:Observational Astronomers are already data mine
on
Creating The UniServer
·
· Score: 2
Well, what I am interested about is that this would make it so that astronomers don't have to use a telescope. Remember, we only have one sky. For each image, there would be attributes for the time-date the image was taken, the celestrial coordinates it was taken at, the magnification, the geographical coordinates it was taken at, and perhaps even the weather conditions.
I don't see a reason why images that aren't in the visible spectrum can't be put into this database. Then you would need perhaps a spectrum range attribute.
The exciting thing in my opinion is what can be done with all this data. Imagine creating a starmap of the entire sky based on real observation, it may be zoomable at some points. Everytime a telescope takes a picture of the sky, it gets put into this database. That could yield a huge amount of data in relatively short time. I can very much see astronomers using this data instead their own observations. Imagine a "video" of the same part of the sky in twenty years.
This can be done from software if all the data is there. I know I would love this kind of thing to be publicly archivable. If I see something in the sky, I can then look onto the internet to see if there was any other images of it.
Sorry if my post is less than coherent, but this seems exctiting to me.
Maybe without the real need for getting customers to upgrade to the next version, they won't be so "innovative". Last time they were innovative we got Clippy.
Don't mind the zealots. The non-zealots are the ones building that application that you require as we speak. The zealots are the ones who spend too much time on Slashdot slapping each other on the back about how good their OS is.
You know...your voice counts. There are any number of Free Software applications that could have the features you need in a few years. These projects tend to evolve from user input. In the past the users with the voice were the administrators, the web authors, and the software developers. But if you go to a project (KWord seems like a good start but if someone could post alternatives...) subscribe to their mailing list, and tell them frankly "Hi I need X, Y, and Z, features to move to GNU/Linux" and if they inquire, give them details about what exactly your needs are and why you need them. If the developers aren't interested, then just back away. It would be impossible to convince them. But a lot of developers of Free Software are explicitly trying to make GNU/Linux more useful for a broader class of users. A lot of times, they just need to know how.
It kind of works different in the Free Software world. In order to get what you want out of the software, you have to get involved in the process of its development. Free Software isn't a spectator sport like propietary software sometimes is. Now...it could mean actual development of your own. But it could also be explaining to the developers exactly what your needs are.
Also note that this isn't the right forum for getting actual changes. Its a good forum for opinion but it has nothing to do with actual progress.
But I am curious...what exactly are your needs? What is in this application of yours that you couldn't achieve with TeX, Mozilla + CSS, or postscript? Yes, I know these are complicated tools...but it is a start.
(Note, I haven't read all of the preceeding posts...sorry, no time.)
IMHO...DHTML is perhaps the source of the majority of usability problems, compatibilty problems, and accessibility problems on the net. Javascript doubly so.
Unfortunately it seems that the average Web "Designer" (instead of web "author") isn't mature enough to use a full programming language on the web. I much prefer XHTML + CSS anyday...at least then I can override usability problems with my own stylesheet. Now if only I can figure out a way to unrender tables...
Arguing about how a three-dimensional is or isn't useful is a far too general argument. The arguments I've heard either way are almost always fallacies. Such as the idea of needing a 3D monitor or a 3D mouse because we use a 2D monitor and a 2D mouse right now. Maybe it is true. Maybe it is not. But the truth is---we don't know. Just because it makes intuitive sense doesn't mean it is true. I would wager that a combination of 2D and 3D interfaces might be a useful experiment---because that is how the eye and mind percieves the world. But again, I am not claiming anything, just making a conjecture.
And that is why we want these projects to be around. We all know it would be pretty cool to have a three dimensional enviroment. But one of the first things these projects are going to do is try to prove that this paradigm *can* be useful and that it *can* be productive. Perhaps not with all the common apps...perhaps with only a niche of apps. But this all an interesting experiment that I look forward to finding out what works and what doesn't. In fact, my interest has been on user interfaces for a while now...both the tradition WIMP interface, but also interfaces for the blind and the 3D interface.
Did you hear that? *Experiment* Isn't it part of geek culture to want to find out new things? Now how are you going to find out new things if you already decide that it is a failure. But! you see a failure is a success! At least we know what approaches *don't* work. Too many of you people are still in Linux advocacy mode where you guys are constantly trying to find out who wins. This isn't a horse race where you wager on a horse to win and then gloat "I told you so" if your horse makes it. We are here to find out more about interfaces in general. I think traditional interfaces would be more useful if some 3D elements were used in it. And a 3D interface could inspire these kinds of ideas at how to make our current WIMP interfaces better. The same goes for interfaces for the blind. I would love to see some true Accessibility initiatives with our current desktop projects. Perhaps a common library that projects can link into to provide common features such as speech synthesis and brail output. And how come X-Windows doesn't have mouse trails---or does it?
So I agree...free software isn't a spectator sport. Its an experiment. Lets see what happens instead of declaring a bet.
Not that it is that hard to make one myself, but I am curious on what you guys have come up with as a useful homepage. Some have talked of forms for search engines and perhaps frames to commonly used sites...
So would you guys mind throwing your home pages up onto a website somewhere for us to 'borrow':-) ? After we insert our own links of course:-)
I hope someday we have ActiveDesktop-like deal for GNU/Linux. That would be fun to play with...
Hmm...you know, stereotypes really suck. I have been and continue to someone who cares for the spirit of freedom with software and GNU system. I know why they are here.
But I am looking forward to KDE2. The biggest change in my mind is that KDE2 is Free Software. If it is Free Software and it has great usability and technical design...then I'm all for it.
So please let people speak for themselves instead of playing the victim and throwing a pitty party.
Its just that some of us value Freedom over Marketshare and Popularity. If you think that is strange, fanatic, or esoteric, then I might think the same of you. You. Just you. Not All-KDE-Users. I don't play that game.
I know it isn't possible but...please! Don't submit these soapbox comments! These are supposed to be honest questions not articles on your own political ideology! Politions should not have to defend themselves against other political ideologies. We all know what the responses to such opinions are if you lurk alt.politics.talk or other political forums. There is no consensus. There probably won't ever be any either.
The relevence of this...little. But it is one of them questions that keep springing up from time to time and there really isn't any answer that people will listen to anyway that will thwart their preconcieved notions of the universe.
Dangnabit people! Women are hurt by enviroment, Mankind was created by Evolution, the Big Bang started the Universe, Coke will always be inferior as long as it is in a red can, and there is nothing you can say about it!
Well...now that I think about it, that previous paragraph was rather silly. But I am tired of going in circles with this debate...I am growing dizzy. Why did I read this thread then? To thwart the natural order of continuity of this hyperspatial temporal direction, contrary to elements of temporal entropy.
Firstly, don't confuse GTK+ bindings with GNOME bindings. They are somewhat different things.
"I get the feeling that the traditional FSF crowd dislike KDE/Qt because it's developed by a different group of people than gnome (read: europeans vs americans) There's a witch hunt around KDE/Qt that never seem to stop. (ok, the original license gripe was a real problem, but IMHO that's fixed now). A lot of other programs have conflicting licenses that cause problems, but there's no will (mostly among redhat and debian) to work with the KDE crowd to solve it. For example, debian redistributes pine in a easy to compile source package, even though they can't legally distribute as a binary. Why not do the same with KDE?"
Absolutely not. I actually have little idea of where all the hackers of the two desktops are; nor does it really matter. What is happening is simple. Here we have two competant desktops for GNU/Linux. From a companies point of view, one of them needs to become standard. So I would see spiralling effect, with GNOME being considered standard, especially now after the GNOME foundation.
And don't play silly political games with words like "witch hunt". There are plenty of zealots on both sides of the fence. Things just happen the way they do. There is no conspiracy here, just mindshare. Debian has had a strict interpretation of the GPL for a long time now. And if KDE thinks there licenses do not conflict, well I doubt they are entirely free of bias either. So stop the finger pointing.
It isn't fair. But I have a feeling that the users of GNU/Linux will benefit from a standard being choosen...regardless which desktop it was.
Now this doesn't mean that people should stop using KDE. You and everyone else on this forum should know better than that. Some people stick to the command line, even.
I think splitting into two competing desktops was a mistake. But there was no way of stopping it and we can't go back now.
Don't reinvoke the Desktop Wars again. It is far more pointless now than it was before.
But what do I know? For all we know, it is KDE last week, GNOME today, and Berlin tommorrow. And in a couple years, the newbies crowd to UDE.
Slashdot Mirror
I think any desktop that tries a 3D paradigm is radical. But that isn't my point.
I want to know, how do you know what will "work" ? What standards do you use? What are your proofs?
Instead we have a whole class of armchair programmers who know practically nothing about implementing the systems they describe.
Really, now. Maybe mapping 2D operation onto 3D will work? The author of this program has proof of concept. Where's yours?
Fare also wrote the vast majority of one of the vastest programming language comparisons I have seem. See The Language Review Subproject at Tunes.org.
And Tunes *has* produced at least one line of code...I think it was a prototype implementation of their programming language---Slate, I beleive.
Note: CSS is cool
I would like to respond to both you and the posters who responded to you.
I know a lot about HTML. It *was* meant to be a simple markup language. It wasn't meant for design. Well...developers demanded more control over presentation and that is what we have. tags and tables and nested tables. Now anyone worth their salt knows that using these techniques cruddify the language. But in order to maintain *some* control over the display of web pages, they were needed.
That time is over. Cascading Style Sheets is definitely the answer. Konqueror is supposed to have full CSS compliance. Embedded web browsing was one of the things that CSS was *designed* for. You just need a user style sheet that overrides the formatting in the web page. I don't know if Konqueror supports user style sheets, but you'd think it should.
Here is definitely a must-read article for those who doesn't understand the power of stylesheets. Changing the size of images to 20x20 pixels. Decreasing font sizes. Getting rid of banner ads. These are ways to make web sites more usable for users on embedded devices. If you are a more traditional HTML coder, than you may find your web site rather mangled, but usable, on these platforms. But if you design your site using the web standards that were designed so that the web could be universally accessed, then you *can* give your web site a distinctive look and feel that your users will always recognize, even as your user moves from device to device.
Your design *will* be overrided by someone's browser, there is nothing you can do about it. It is part of the universallness of the web. For people who need larger font-sizes and contrasting colors, they will probably have user style sheets also. If you *work* with the standards, you can still influence the presentation of the web site.
But fixed-size, paper-like web displays are a thing of the past. Computers are far more flexible than paper.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head><title>HTML is easy</title></head>
<body>
<h1>HTML is easy</h1>
<p><acronym title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</acronym> is easy. It is a simple way of defining text. All you need to know is what your paragraphs, your headings, and your markup are and the HTML will do the rest. Javascript isn't suppose to be there...it is just rot for the web designers who want <em>Really Cool Effects</em>. Well...I suppose I haven't seen a good use for Javascript yet...I would love to be surprised.</p>
</body>
</html>
This is why we should avoid political discussion on Slashdot. Because we get Trolls like the parent poster spamming the forum with political propaganda of their party.
I could go through Grant's post and find the fallacies, untruths, and misrepresentations that he spewed; but that would be a waste of my time.
Regardless of which faction you decide you belong to based on political ideology, economic class, political party, hair color, or family pets; can't we all just agree to discuss based on the facts and well justified opinion with good geek talk. You know what I mean by geek talk...the kind of talk where you speak about the relative merits of the system, candidates, or political ideology.
Look...both candidates are messed up. That doesn't make the other candidate any better. Everything the parent poster said was anti-Bush. What? Can Bush do no wrong? Wait...my mistake. You were spewwing propaganda.
*sigh*
"Yeah right, a 7+ year A+ tech with Novell, NT and Linux experience isn't worth more than $10/hr?"
:-)
Hey! I make $5.25/hr!
Hmm...but I work at Subway so that kind of makes sense...
Heh, carry on.
"But the FSF doesn't want me to distribute software privately, only publicly or not at all."
This statement is very wrong.
The only thing that the FSF want is that if you recieve a binary, that you have rights to the source code as well. If you didn't get the binary, you don't get the source code.
Simple, isn't it. You CAN distribute privately. You don't have to distribute publicly. It says this in the GPL!
Stop being so contensious!
Yeah...kinda...
HTML does links. Links are cool. They can link to all kind of content. That includes them pictures.
But the <img> tag has been depreciated in favor of the <object> tag, which is really impressive. I don't want to look up the spec right now but it goes somthing like this.
<object href="http://cool video of space shuttle launch" type="video"> <object href="shuttle.jpg" type="jpg"> Shuttle launched 20 Nov 1995</object> </object>
I am okay with pictures and multimedia as long as they are used to relay content. But they are not! Check out them roundy thingies in Slashdot's headings on the front page. They are images and they are only so that the page looks all roundy!
The object tag allows the browser to pick a method for viewing the content based upon its capabilites or user preference. But why would a web designer do that when it can do:
<object href="cool splash page" type="flash animation">Sorry...but this page requires Flash 4, Shockwave, IE or Netscape 4, Windows Media Player, and 800x600 resolution</object>
But I digress!
(goes to look up the word "digress")
I'm no scientist, but I don't think they should use a lossful file format for this kind of thing.
Scientist: Hmm...what's this shady pixel on mars here? Could it be...could it be life!
Geek: Nahh...that just a result of the JPEG algorithm just making up pixels it lost in its compression algorithm.
Um, I don't think this was a white paper. I think it was an idea...perhaps a proposal to astronomers.
I don't think it matters what OS they use or what database system they use, etc. etc. until they start implementing it.
I think the astronomers would very much appreciate this use of technology. It is one of the purist uses of technology I have known.
But I am interested in details as well though. So for those of you who specialize in this sort of stuff, how would you go about implementing this sort of system? Would GNU/Linux be able to handle it?
Well, what I am interested about is that this would make it so that astronomers don't have to use a telescope. Remember, we only have one sky. For each image, there would be attributes for the time-date the image was taken, the celestrial coordinates it was taken at, the magnification, the geographical coordinates it was taken at, and perhaps even the weather conditions.
I don't see a reason why images that aren't in the visible spectrum can't be put into this database. Then you would need perhaps a spectrum range attribute.
The exciting thing in my opinion is what can be done with all this data. Imagine creating a starmap of the entire sky based on real observation, it may be zoomable at some points. Everytime a telescope takes a picture of the sky, it gets put into this database. That could yield a huge amount of data in relatively short time. I can very much see astronomers using this data instead their own observations. Imagine a "video" of the same part of the sky in twenty years.
This can be done from software if all the data is there. I know I would love this kind of thing to be publicly archivable. If I see something in the sky, I can then look onto the internet to see if there was any other images of it.
Sorry if my post is less than coherent, but this seems exctiting to me.
Maybe without the real need for getting customers to upgrade to the next version, they won't be so "innovative". Last time they were innovative we got Clippy.
Don't mind the zealots. The non-zealots are the ones building that application that you require as we speak. The zealots are the ones who spend too much time on Slashdot slapping each other on the back about how good their OS is.
You know...your voice counts. There are any number of Free Software applications that could have the features you need in a few years. These projects tend to evolve from user input. In the past the users with the voice were the administrators, the web authors, and the software developers. But if you go to a project (KWord seems like a good start but if someone could post alternatives...) subscribe to their mailing list, and tell them frankly "Hi I need X, Y, and Z, features to move to GNU/Linux" and if they inquire, give them details about what exactly your needs are and why you need them. If the developers aren't interested, then just back away. It would be impossible to convince them. But a lot of developers of Free Software are explicitly trying to make GNU/Linux more useful for a broader class of users. A lot of times, they just need to know how.
It kind of works different in the Free Software world. In order to get what you want out of the software, you have to get involved in the process of its development. Free Software isn't a spectator sport like propietary software sometimes is. Now...it could mean actual development of your own. But it could also be explaining to the developers exactly what your needs are.
Also note that this isn't the right forum for getting actual changes. Its a good forum for opinion but it has nothing to do with actual progress.
But I am curious...what exactly are your needs? What is in this application of yours that you couldn't achieve with TeX, Mozilla + CSS, or postscript? Yes, I know these are complicated tools...but it is a start.
(Note, I haven't read all of the preceeding posts...sorry, no time.)
IMHO...DHTML is perhaps the source of the majority of usability problems, compatibilty problems, and accessibility problems on the net. Javascript doubly so. Unfortunately it seems that the average Web "Designer" (instead of web "author") isn't mature enough to use a full programming language on the web. I much prefer XHTML + CSS anyday...at least then I can override usability problems with my own stylesheet. Now if only I can figure out a way to unrender tables...
I agree.
Arguing about how a three-dimensional is or isn't useful is a far too general argument. The arguments I've heard either way are almost always fallacies. Such as the idea of needing a 3D monitor or a 3D mouse because we use a 2D monitor and a 2D mouse right now. Maybe it is true. Maybe it is not. But the truth is---we don't know. Just because it makes intuitive sense doesn't mean it is true. I would wager that a combination of 2D and 3D interfaces might be a useful experiment---because that is how the eye and mind percieves the world. But again, I am not claiming anything, just making a conjecture.
And that is why we want these projects to be around. We all know it would be pretty cool to have a three dimensional enviroment. But one of the first things these projects are going to do is try to prove that this paradigm *can* be useful and that it *can* be productive. Perhaps not with all the common apps...perhaps with only a niche of apps. But this all an interesting experiment that I look forward to finding out what works and what doesn't. In fact, my interest has been on user interfaces for a while now...both the tradition WIMP interface, but also interfaces for the blind and the 3D interface.
Did you hear that? *Experiment* Isn't it part of geek culture to want to find out new things? Now how are you going to find out new things if you already decide that it is a failure. But! you see a failure is a success! At least we know what approaches *don't* work. Too many of you people are still in Linux advocacy mode where you guys are constantly trying to find out who wins. This isn't a horse race where you wager on a horse to win and then gloat "I told you so" if your horse makes it. We are here to find out more about interfaces in general. I think traditional interfaces would be more useful if some 3D elements were used in it. And a 3D interface could inspire these kinds of ideas at how to make our current WIMP interfaces better. The same goes for interfaces for the blind. I would love to see some true Accessibility initiatives with our current desktop projects. Perhaps a common library that projects can link into to provide common features such as speech synthesis and brail output. And how come X-Windows doesn't have mouse trails---or does it?
So I agree...free software isn't a spectator sport. Its an experiment. Lets see what happens instead of declaring a bet.
Not that it is that hard to make one myself, but I am curious on what you guys have come up with as a useful homepage. Some have talked of forms for search engines and perhaps frames to commonly used sites...
:-) ? After we insert our own links of course :-)
So would you guys mind throwing your home pages up onto a website somewhere for us to 'borrow'
I hope someday we have ActiveDesktop-like deal for GNU/Linux. That would be fun to play with...
Hmm...you know, stereotypes really suck. I have been and continue to someone who cares for the spirit of freedom with software and GNU system. I know why they are here.
But I am looking forward to KDE2. The biggest change in my mind is that KDE2 is Free Software. If it is Free Software and it has great usability and technical design...then I'm all for it.
So please let people speak for themselves instead of playing the victim and throwing a pitty party.
Its just that some of us value Freedom over Marketshare and Popularity. If you think that is strange, fanatic, or esoteric, then I might think the same of you. You. Just you. Not All-KDE-Users. I don't play that game.
Because that's the way its supposed to work.
I know it isn't possible but...please! Don't submit these soapbox comments! These are supposed to be honest questions not articles on your own political ideology! Politions should not have to defend themselves against other political ideologies. We all know what the responses to such opinions are if you lurk alt.politics.talk or other political forums. There is no consensus. There probably won't ever be any either.
As a women, which do you prefer: Coke or Pepsi?
The relevence of this...little. But it is one of them questions that keep springing up from time to time and there really isn't any answer that people will listen to anyway that will thwart their preconcieved notions of the universe.
Dangnabit people! Women are hurt by enviroment, Mankind was created by Evolution, the Big Bang started the Universe, Coke will always be inferior as long as it is in a red can, and there is nothing you can say about it!
Well...now that I think about it, that previous paragraph was rather silly. But I am tired of going in circles with this debate...I am growing dizzy. Why did I read this thread then? To thwart the natural order of continuity of this hyperspatial temporal direction, contrary to elements of temporal entropy.
LOL!
All bow to the power of Magick.
"And the best web sites are still the ones that stick with just the basic HTML tags..."
Sad. HTML has some really nice semantic tags like <ACRONYM> and <ABBR> that even professional web designers never use.
"For one, Macs still have by far the easiest and most transparent GUI"
I don't know about the "easiest" front but I beleive the Berlin GUI is much more transparent.
;-)
Firstly, don't confuse GTK+ bindings with GNOME bindings. They are somewhat different things.
"I get the feeling that the traditional FSF crowd dislike KDE/Qt because it's developed by a different group of people than gnome (read: europeans vs americans) There's a witch hunt around KDE/Qt that never seem to stop. (ok, the original license gripe was a real problem, but IMHO that's fixed now). A lot of other programs have conflicting licenses that cause problems, but there's no will (mostly among redhat and debian) to work with the KDE crowd to solve it. For example, debian redistributes pine in a easy to compile source package, even though they can't legally distribute as a binary. Why not do the same with KDE?"
Absolutely not. I actually have little idea of where all the hackers of the two desktops are; nor does it really matter. What is happening is simple. Here we have two competant desktops for GNU/Linux. From a companies point of view, one of them needs to become standard. So I would see spiralling effect, with GNOME being considered standard, especially now after the GNOME foundation.
And don't play silly political games with words like "witch hunt". There are plenty of zealots on both sides of the fence. Things just happen the way they do. There is no conspiracy here, just mindshare. Debian has had a strict interpretation of the GPL for a long time now. And if KDE thinks there licenses do not conflict, well I doubt they are entirely free of bias either. So stop the finger pointing.
It isn't fair. But I have a feeling that the users of GNU/Linux will benefit from a standard being choosen...regardless which desktop it was.
Now this doesn't mean that people should stop using KDE. You and everyone else on this forum should know better than that. Some people stick to the command line, even.
I think splitting into two competing desktops was a mistake. But there was no way of stopping it and we can't go back now.
Don't reinvoke the Desktop Wars again. It is far more pointless now than it was before.
But what do I know? For all we know, it is KDE last week, GNOME today, and Berlin tommorrow. And in a couple years, the newbies crowd to UDE.
It could happen. Maybe.
Because some of us thought that joke was funny while others may not. It would produce moderation hell.
Any thoughts on a hostile takeover of our government?
:)
Or am I taking this too far