faq
flatforty
contribute
subscribe
configure
search
rdf
main
parent
|
Just give me a break.
by Murat Kotch on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @15:45
|
Please excuse me but what is up with all the OOo obsession ? In the previous article (the Interview with David Faure) someone pointed out how many problems he got with OOo by rendering Tables wrong, Segfaulting when loading old Staroffice files, the huge load times and the overall slow and bad operation. I don't think that Enterprise customers want that. Not to mention that the entire Staroffice suite (afaik) is written using the Staroffice foundation class. Totally different to what QT or GTK+ is and altering everything to use a GTK+ or QT Window or Filedialogs doesn't change the rest of the program. It's a lot of energy and time that could be better used to finish KOffice for example.
Gecko vs. KHTML part in this Interview also sounds like it would be better to abandon KHTML in favor to Gecko. Sure Gecko does offer better rendering capabilities but its entire framework doesn't really fit into the KDE or GNOME world. Speaking of XUL as different Widgetset or the entire Interfaces for JavaScript, SSL, Cookies etc. This would require a lot of work on the KDE side I assume and would only generate a huge mess (which I only assume here).
HAL and DBUS also something that needs to be thought about. HAL, as the name implies it's a Hardware Abstraction Layer and we know that BSD, Linux, Solaris and so on offer their own Kernel side HAL which sits between Hardware and Kernel. This new HAL (god bless but it's all against what I have been studying for many Semesters) is something I don't understand this one sits between Kernel and Desktop in Userland and adds a second HAL layer ontop of it working together with UDEV and Hotpluging. Either I don't understand it, or it's totally different to what people teach students at universities or last but not least the name is misleading.
DBUS something that has been created by the GNOME fraction once they realized that CORBA and Bonobo is overkill for what they do now trying to get the KDE people to throw away DCOP in favor of this.
Parts of the Interview gives me the impression that this guy is more talking for the side of the GNOME people rather than the KDE people because everything he said I already heard from GNOME and de Icaza. This is exactly what the GNOME people are doing. Merging OOo, merging HAL, merging DBUS, merging Gecko and everything that has been done so far looks like unfinished patchwork. I don't think or believe that this is what KDE users and supporters really want. Sure they want good functionality such as good rendering and good office suite but this doesn't mean that KDE has to throw away half of their core for things that can hardly been merged due to different framework.
When I listen to the kde-core-devel mailinglists then I see how people defend the position and questionize whether HAL, DBUS, Gecko are all that good of ideas. Hell whenever some GNOME fart into the air we need to adopt it. They say jump and we have to jump. |
|
|
The Fine Print: The following comments
are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by Aaron J. Seigo on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @16:07
|
OOo is a current necessity given the state of other options. i do hope that in the long run it goes away, and having KOffice use the OOo file format natively puts it in a good position to take over eventually.
as for HAL, DBUS and other such things, stop obsessing about where things come from. as long the license is right (e.g. Free/Open Source), the only the question we need to ask is "Would using this make KDE better? Does it serve our goals and purposes?" for what else really matters? these are complex questions that cover everything from features, release cycles, APIs, interop, maintainability and much more. but "did a GNOME touch it?" is irrelevant.
as for "unfinished patchwork", well.. if that's your assessment of the GNOME's efforts, fair enough, but i fail to see how their efforts reflect upon our's, anymore than our's reflect upon their's. i'd suggest judging the KDE project's efforts by the KDE product, not some other product.
"Hell whenever some GNOME fart into the air we need to adopt it." you mistake cooperation for weakness and brand it undesirable. cooperation goes both ways (look at how many freedesktop.org specs are basically KDE ideas touched up and 'rebranded'), and it can have great rewards for all, especially our users.
now, mindless acceptance of any and every suggestion would be stupid. but fortunately the KDE developers are anything but mindless.
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by Derek Kite on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @18:08
|
I totally agree. Using OOo brings to mind the expression 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth'. Without it large Linux deployments wouldn't happen. It is nice to see the active development in KOffice.
Regarding DBUS (and other technologies that Kde would adopt), the question is whether the developers are responsive to the needs and suggestions from the Kde folks. From what I understand, there is no problem.
Derek
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by jadrian on Thursday 07/Oct/2004, @02:45
|
Hi,
Even though I understand your point, 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' seems like a terrible choice as an expression to me. If it's important as a selling point right now, then it should be examined closely. If KDE integration is important this kind of things simple cannot happen: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=23526
Drag and Drop of images from konqueror to some of the OpenOffice.org apps (e.g. OO Writer), create a link to the image instead of including it. This can be terrible, it affects KDE users directly. It screwed up lots of documents of my sister which were filled with pictures. I reported it almost one year ago. I'd expect at least, lots pressure from distros like SUSE towards the OO.org developers to fix this kind of nasty bugs.
My sister is now using KOffice for that kind of work.
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by aleXXX on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @18:06
|
Well, OOo is currently necessary. It more or less imports and exports most MS Office files without problems, it has a lot of features, it doesn't crash.
Big downside: slow and huge.
Gecko, well, I don't know, KHTML is cool.
DBUS: this has the potential to become really cool. It doesn't come from GNOME. It doesn't even link to glib. It will make KDE startup faster (since it's already running at that time and doesn't have to be started like dcopserver). Kernel messages (e.g. hotplugging) might come via DBUS. We will be able to talk to KDE and Gnome and <you name it> apps via DBUS.
Bye
Alex
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by Navindra Umanee on Thursday 07/Oct/2004, @04:58
|
What do you mean it doesn't have to be started? As far as I know a DBUS server is started for each user, in addition to the system DBUS server.
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by aleXXX on Thursday 07/Oct/2004, @15:44
|
I guess it will be started by default when the user logs in, so it's already there when the KDE startup starts. Or if you are running a gnome desktop and start a KDE app then it will be already running.
Bye
Alex
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by hobgoblin on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @20:44
|
about that hal stuff. from what i understand the linux kernel have a hal in only the strictest sense if at all. the "hal" i belive is that you will find a cdrom under /dev/cdrom if you have the system set up nicely, or under /dev/hd** if you dont...
for devices like digital cameras, webcams and so forth your app will still have to understand what is comeing out of the device file for it to be usefull. the hal in the works is supposed to be a bit like directx. you code towards it and it will then act as a translater between the device and the app. hell it may even help in allowing access by multiple apps if needed...
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by Simon Edwards on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @23:58
|
| about that hal stuff. from what i understand the linux kernel have
| a hal in only the strictest sense if at all. the "hal" i belive is
| that you will find a cdrom under /dev/cdrom if you have the system
| set up nicely, or under /dev/hd** if you dont...
...or under /dev/pcd* if it is a parallel port cdrom, or under /dev/cm206cd if
it is a Philips LMS CM-206 cdrom, but for the Philips LMS CM-205 you need to
look out for /dev/cm205cd... and so on and so on. The (Linux) kernel exposes
devices as a loose bag of drivers, device nodes and buses. For the
application developer is it a nightmare to make sense of, and it keeps on
changing as new hardware support is added. HAL solves this problem by
organising and reporting all of the hardware that you have in a form designed
with applications in mind. This is how HAL reports my cdrom:
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/block_22_0'
info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/block_22_0' (string)
storage.hotpluggable = false (bool)
storage.cdrom.write_speed = 2816 (0xb00) (int)
storage.cdrom.read_speed = 7040 (0x1b80) (int)
storage.cdrom.support_media_changed = true (bool)
storage.cdrom.dvdplusrw = false (bool)
storage.cdrom.dvdplusr = false (bool)
storage.cdrom.dvdram = false (bool)
storage.cdrom.dvdr = false (bool)
storage.cdrom.dvd = false (bool)
storage.cdrom.cdrw = true (bool)
storage.cdrom.cdr = true (bool)
storage.removable = true (bool)
storage.firmware_version = 'OS0B' (string)
storage.drive_type = 'cdrom' (string)
info.product = 'LITE-ON LTR-16102B' (string)
block.storage_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/block_22_0' (string)
storage.physical_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/ide_1_0' (string)
storage.vendor = '' (string)
storage.model = 'LITE-ON LTR-16102B' (string)
storage.automount_enabled_hint = true (bool)
storage.no_partitions_hint = true (bool)
storage.media_check_enabled = true (bool)
storage.bus = 'ide' (string)
block.minor = 0 (0x0) (int)
block.major = 22 (0x16) (int)
info.capabilities = 'block storage.cdrom storage' (string)
info.category = 'storage' (string)
info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/ide_1_0' (string)
block.device = '/dev/hdc' (string)
block.is_volume = false (bool)
block.have_scanned = false (bool)
block.no_partitions = true (bool)
linux.sysfs_path_device = '/sys/block/hdc' (string)
linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/block/hdc' (string)
info.bus = 'block' (string)
All of the vitial information is broken down and organised reguardless of where exactly it came from.
--
Simon
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by Joe on Thursday 07/Oct/2004, @08:31
|
"and questionize whether HAL, DBUS, Gecko are all that good of ideas."
I mean, with well-written and founded statements like that, how can anyone arguize?
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by cm on Thursday 07/Oct/2004, @21:18
|
Although I don't like people making fun of (I assume) non-native writers of English that one made me laugh.
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
|
Re: Just give me a break.
by ac on Thursday 07/Oct/2004, @15:22
|
I agree with your view regarding OOo and Gecko. They're both bloated monstrosities and don't really fit into KDE. But sometimes I have to use OOo because Koffice is just not there yet. For instance, have you ever tried to produce nice charts from your spreadsheet in kspread and then tried to print them? I gave up and went to OOo Calc for that. But, what I can't do with OOo is control it with scripts via DCOP! This is the greatest asset KDE has! I use it quite frequently, for instance to fill in spreadsheet cells and other stuff.
Regarding Gecko and KHTML, some of our users found out that Konqueror renders some pages just fine which Mozilla/Firefox just balk on. And after I showed them the DCOP-Kaction bridge and how to use it to script Konqueror they got completely hooked. The challenge was to save copies of certain pages automatically and neither wget nor curl could do it because of some javascript stuff in the page. With Konqueror and DCOP it was childs play. So, before you through away DCOP and replace it with DBUS please make sure that KDE doesn't loose any of the current DCOP functionality! This is one of the main selling points for KDE IMO.
|
[
Reply To This | View ]
|
The Fine Print: The previous
comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )
|
|
![[KDE Dot News]](http://www.kde.org/dot/Images/kdedotnews.gif)
