Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by David Joyce on Monday 18/Jun/2007, @04:27

I agree with the others on this one - having a separate scanning application is immensely preferable. Kooka has served KDE very well for a number of years, and I have found it particarly useful. Inserting scanning into an application such as Krita makes a simple task rather complicated for a number of users. This seems especially to go against the grain of the Unix philosophy of providing simple utilities, and also decisions such as to separate off file management into Dolphin. Please retain Kooka!

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by Diederik van der Boor on Monday 18/Jun/2007, @04:35

> Please retain Kooka!

I'd go for a alternative with much more friendly UI... (the wizard I described somewhere above). for the remaining, you've complemented the other arguments nicely.. :-)

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by Boudewijn on Monday 18/Jun/2007, @10:01

Actually, I don't use Krita to scan images myself. I haven't even tried it -- not even now that I have a scanner again. I actually had forgotten that Krita was supposed to be capable of directly scanning images in. And I'm the maintainer... But I tried Kooka and went to using XSane myself, because it does 16 bits. I'm not sure whether libkscan supports 16 (or rather 12) bits per channel at all.

But it should be easy enough to write a standalone scan application using libkscan -- you can probably do it yourself, in Python or Ruby or C++.

There's just one thing I'm certain of: nobody actually working on KDE4 has time to start or restart a dedicated scanning application. Kooka has been seriously unmaintained for ages. So -- if you want a scanning application, if you think it's important that there is a scanning application, then you need to act. Stop pleading. Stop hoping. Follow the instructions on techbase and start a development environment. Start developing. Become a widely-admired hero!

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by Aaron J. Seigo on Monday 18/Jun/2007, @10:36

> I'm not sure whether libkscan supports

... i'd be surprised if it doesn't as it uses sane, so should follow what xsane can do.

> nobody actually working on KDE4 has time to start or restart

which is exactly what i was thinking when suggesting krita is good enough for now. due to having ways to scan there's no big impending doom cloud hanging above if there isn't a little scanner shell in 4.0.

> Kooka has been seriously unmaintained for ages.

it would need a pretty big rethink/rewrite in any case as the UI really needs to be completely rethought. given that most of the logic (except the ocr stuff) is in libkscan, it makes the choice even more obvious.

> Start developing. Become a widely-admired hero!

indeed.

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by forrest on Monday 18/Jun/2007, @14:26

it would need a pretty big rethink/rewrite in any case as the UI really needs to be completely rethought.

I'll second that :)

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by ac on Monday 18/Jun/2007, @15:41

I'll second that :)

Could you please elaborate? What do you not like about the current user interface, and what ideas do you have to make it better? It would be great if we could collect some ideas here, so that the soon-to-be-widely-admired hero knows what to do...

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by whatever noticed on Tuesday 19/Jun/2007, @03:45

my main problem with the current interface is that you can close the views in the main screen, but cant get them back in the same fashion.
Most novice users i work with come to me with an empty kooka screen and the only way to restore it to its default layout is by removing ~/.kde/share/config/kookarc.

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by Aaron Seigo on Tuesday 19/Jun/2007, @09:34

more than anything else, keep it simple. it doesn't need docks, it doesn't need galleries, it doesn't need a separate image viewer space ... simplicity. if the user wants all of those things, they can use gweview or krita. preview, crop/select, rotate and save: that's all that's needed.

second, do it fast. there were a number of things kooka tried to automate or handle "smartly" that made the app a bit slow.

third, don't try and manage the image results automagically. kooka tried quite bravely to keep automated galleries around. imho the scanner app should treat the scans as documents (think kate, kwrite, kword, etc) and not try and auomatically mange them.

that's just mho though, and to be fair i've used kooka for years and have got a lot of utility out of it. so it's a good app. but we can probably do even better by learning from it.

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by MamiyaOtaru on Thursday 28/Jun/2007, @22:50

OK, I'll happily admit this is better than whining about kooka disappearing. If a better scanning app comes out of this it's a win.

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by Odysseus on Tuesday 19/Jun/2007, @11:56

We've been over this ground a few times now, haven't we??? :-)

>> I'm not sure whether libkscan supports

>... i'd be surprised if it doesn't as it uses sane, so should follow what
> xsane can do.

Having trawled through libkscan in the past, I can say there's a lot of stubs in there where the author intended to support all the features in SANE, but didn't in the end. It's also very messy. I'm of the opinion that libkscan needs a full re-write for the post-Solid & Windows/Mac world that finally does support all my scanners features :-) I have some code that speaks to my scanner OK, but I'm a bit like the artilleryman in War of the Worlds...

Everything else is a +1 from me. Kooka tries to do too much, we already have great image management apps. Instead its widely agreed that a beefed up libkscan in kdegraphics and a couple of new smaller apps outside libs is the way to go.

John.

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by David Joyce on Tuesday 19/Jun/2007, @14:04

Aaron & Boudewijn,

Start developing - perhaps this is an invite I can't resist. With the amount of spare time I have, it will have be a _slow_ process!

I'll try and get in touch with you to see what I can do. The UI suggestions posted seem very sensible - I've always thought the gallery pane, and that sort of stuff, added undue complexity to the whole scanning process.

- David

ps. best leave the hero bit out, I think... :-)

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Re: "Kooka and kmrml are removed completely."
by Boudewijn Rempt on Wednesday 20/Jun/2007, @00:14

Sure. Feel free to contact me, either by email or on #koffice.

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