In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Sonnet, the natural language checker, continues to develop and can now discriminate between more than 70 different languages. More work on the "konsole-split-view" branch to add split/merge functionality to the KDE 4 console. Support for filesystem labels in the "mountconfig" Guidance configuration module. Large developments in the "mailtransport" KDE-PIM work to enable code sharing between users of the common "emailing" action. Support for background text colours in Konversation. Further work in the "Papillon" MSN Messenger connection library, with support for Xtraz status and notifications in Kopete. Gradient editing tool introduced across KOffice. Better support for PDF presentation files in Okular. Improved AI in the recently-imported game KSquares. "Sublime", the new user interface library for KDevelop 4 is imported into KDE SVN. The initial code for KRunner, the KDE 4 replacement for the "Run Command" dialog, is imported into KDE SVN. The RSS Konqueror sidebar plugin is removed from KDE SVN, along with dcoprss and librss, which will both be replaced by libsyndication in KDE 4.
Comments
Seeing that Okular continues to improve quicly, with both improved featues and bug and mem leak fixes, and Ligature's development seems very slow at the moment (about 6 commits in one month), would not it be time to simply replace Ligature by Okular in kdegraphics4? I know this is an emotional subject for some people, but just looking at the facts, it seems to be clear to me which should be done now...
Its a bit odd to base the inclusion of an application on the commits of one month don't you think?
But it's not at all "odd" to choose the the default application based on good and active maintainership.
See also
http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/kde/okular and http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/kde/ligature
(Not only look at the difference in activity, also look at the kind of changes being made and the number of developers having committed to the project, in the left box)
I can only conclude that Okular is really actively maintained, while Ligature currently is almost dead.
I believe Ligature is currently developed under the completely brainfucked name UNNAMED_READER - http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/kde/UNNAMED_READER - which still has got much less commits than Okular, but seems far from being dead.
What the Ligature devs (or rather, dev, as Stefan Kebekus seems to be the only one improving the app at the moment) are lacking is good promotion work, and getting others to join the project as developers or at least as supporters. Something that gets the masses interested. Something that makes people want this application.
So, we know that KPDF rocks and Okular is a solid improvement to KPDF. We have read that Okular supports a wide range of documents, and there's even a support chart on its web site: http://kpdf.kde.org/okular/formats.php ...where is Ligature's web presence? We have come to know that Okular uses poppler for its PDF support (there's also a link on their site), where do I get to know if Ligature uses it too, and how good its support is? Which improvements are in it for me if I use "UNNAMED_READER" instead of Okular?
The only thing that I always hear is that Ligature's DVI support is much better, which is due to its KDVI heritage. This is great, and I liked KDVI much better than KPDF when I wrote my bachelor thesis in LaTeX. But you won't win the battle for the universal page viewer with good DVI support. You'll win it with good usability, interesting features, speed with viewing and scrolling, more developers (who cooperate with other projects) and most of all perfect PDF support. Because as much as I like DVI, it'll always be a niche format while PDF is everywhere.
From what I read on the dot, and on k-c-d, it always seems to me that the Ligature devs are only in a defensive position. There's a call for Okular, which is opposed by the Ligature devs listing a few areas where Okular still falls back, then the Okular devs respond with their app's advantages, and then everyone cuts each other into pieces with mutual insults. Or at least, that's how I perceive it.
If "UNNAMED_READER" is to be successful, there's really just two options:
- Be vastly better than Okular. Simply being on par won't suffice for inclusion in main KDE4. The current state is that everyone, including important core developers, prefer Okular over Ligature as the universal page viewer, so you have to give them a reason why they should choose Ligature instead of Okular. Not the other way round, believe me when I say that won't work. Going down this path includes better promotion (probably a blog with new Ligature features, and working on a "we are a friendly development team with a welcoming attitude" image), working together with the usability team, and (have I mentioned it already?) exceptional PDF support.
- Or, do one job well and concentrate on plain being the DVI viewer for Kile. Provided Okular's DVI support is really not good enough, going down this road will likely get you a safe place for Ligature where it doesn't have its existence questioned again and again.
Currently Okular is outside of KDE4's main branch and Ligature is inside of it, but you really shouldn't give a damn about this fact. Almost everyone wants Okular in, and if the Ligature devs don't improve a) their communications, b) their commitment to fast development, and c) their vision of what Ligature should be and not be, then Ligature will be out of there by the time KDE4 is released.
Draw your conclusions.
Oh right, and have some announcement about what it is with UNNAMED_READER. I'm sure it's a nice in-joke and makes sense somehow, but it definitely confuses the common interested user.
I have been told that UNNAMED_READER is not Ligature, so that's an error on my side. Please think "Ligature" everywhere I wrote "UNNAMED_READER". Sorry for the incorrectness, it's just that so much hints were pointing at the two apps being the same.
well, if you vote for ligature in stead of okular, we'll forgive you :o)
Thank you for the report!
I wondered how many contributions came from the main countries. Germany and France are the sole countries above 10%, but how much exactly for each?
Here is the breakdown for the top 5 of this week:
de: 19.8
(unknown): 19.2
fr: 13.0
nl: 7.75
it: 4.73
I plan to expose these more detailed statistics in the digest at a later date.
"(unknown)" are due to cases where I haven't collected data for those developers yet - so, all KDE SVN account holders please go to http://commit-digest.org/data/ ;)
Danny
i went there, filled in my svn account, but got no response :o)
Ah, i was too unpatient :o)