faq
flatforty
contribute
subscribe
configure
search
rdf
main
parent
thread
|
Re: Kommander runtime badly missing
by Eric Laffoon on Monday 31/Jul/2006, @19:29
|
There's not a lot we can do about where distributions choose to irrationally put the Kommander executor. As I mentioned earlier, it's a 121K binary. You know how modern hard drives can't afford such bloat just to run one of 5 pages of programs listed for Kommander at http://kde-apps.org. Seriously our only hope is to make this an obvious user problem for them. Complain to them! I don't care if the editor is not available outside a development package, even though our goal is to make it easy enough to create dialogs and applications with that any novice can do it. I do think the executor ought to be part of the base KDE packages though.
From our standpoint there is just a lot of work on the core application to get it where we want it to be, even though it's quite usable right now. With a few months development we could have a far more compelling and capable tool which could also be used to create it's own extentions. We believe extending the capabilities and enabling our users to become involved in the development would cause dynamic growth of applications and acceptance. However we also have the issue with distros. They used to install all of a KDE release. I set up a a neighbor with SUSE 10 recently and had to search out and install Quanta to show them my software. There's a lot of web pages out there. Ironically some distros install Quanta without the Kommander runtime which means some dialogs don't work. As a final challange I've explained Kommander to other KDE developers who have surprised me by not seeing why I would want to build such an application. I have dozens of little helpful tools I built in 5-10 minutes each for my day to day work and I've released applications with well under 100 lines of code. I'm not alone in that experience and that's exciting.
Kommander has the ability to produce no-compile lightweight mini applications (MainWindow apps, projects, KStuff integration and installer coming) which currently can do thousands of internal DCOP operations per second, can use any KDE widgets and plugins and can create scripted actions or script like functions via point and click. It can easily extend any KDE application. It does internationalization and enables users to interactively enter the development cycle as well as become developers. In my mind this is the holy grail. Unfortunately part of the biggest hurdle we have is getting user recognition and demand. Getting Kommander's executor in the base KDE libraries and making sure it's installed is helped by user acceptance and demand and more Kommander based applications appearing. It's a catch 22 because we need more people to know about Kommander and it wouldn't hurt to have just a little more sponsorship support, but of course many people have to go out of there way to even check it out.
I really need Kommander users to make some noise. Recognition and user demand are essential for this program to insure it is not another great idea lost in the fringes. Talk to your distro, build a mini app and release it, help us extend it, help sponsor development... We certainly appreciate it all. |
|
|
![[KDE Dot News]](http://www.kde.org/dot/Images/kdedotnews.gif)
