KDE Traffic #68 is Out

KDE Traffic #68 has been released, covering topics ranging from toolbars (1, 2), KMail and Kontact fun, to a change in the KDE 3.2 release schedule. Enjoy!

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Comments

by anon (not verified)

I really enjoyed this issue. It was quite entertaining to read about all the KDE developments and the friendly banter that goes back and forth between the developers. Thanks for keeping KDE Traffic alive!

by a.c. (not verified)

I wonder how he is going to reconcile it based on Nat's Slashdot posting which all but says that they will try to kill KDE. Which of company is going to win? Ximian or Suse?

by Ian Reinhart Geiser (not verified)

I think its too early to tell... Remember Novell is the same company that brought us WordPerfect Office, and Unixware... I think we need to wait 2 years to see the body count. Then we can speculate their strategy.

Its not over until the check is in the bank man.
-ian reinhart geiser

by Thorsten Schnebeck (not verified)
by a.c. (not verified)

huuuummmm. I must be plain stupid.
What does Rekall (an app) going GPL have to do with the possibility of Novell (Ximian) trying to kill off KDE?

by Thorsten Schnebeck (not verified)

Wrong thread?

by CE (not verified)

Yes, your link is wrong.

by Thorsten Schnebeck (not verified)

Oh, I should better use ctrl+c than MMB :o)
Next try:
http://dot.kde.org/1068570005/1068982411/

by Michel Nolard (not verified)

The problem is that the IBM presentation was removed as
"is has not been approved for publication"...

Understand it at your will ;)

by AC (not verified)

Do you have a link to the Slashdot posting?

by a.c. (not verified)

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=84723&cid=7393279

Kinda of nasty, if you ask me. I feel like I am listening to another Bill Gates speech from 1991 when he says that Windows will be secured, easy to install, low cost, and will play nice with all.

by Src (not verified)

Damn, SuSE has been doing such a great job with KDE.
I really don't like the sound of "we will still support kde".

Anyway I'll wait and see, then decide wether to stick with it or not.

by OI (not verified)

Common guys... It's not _that_ surprising to see the founder of Ximian making those kind of posts. Gnome is what he live on. And KDE is his competitor.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I don't see this as either Ximian or SuSE winning. Clearly, what will happen is that they will be integrated. This integration could be either good or bad for KDE.

SuSE could become a GNOME/Ximian distro that also offers the stock KDE. This would not be good because they would no longer be promoting KDE -- just make the RPMs of whatever we release and put it in the distro. OTOH, I guess that we wish that that was what RedHat did. :-D

Or, they could integrate some of the Ximian stuff into KDE (Evolution and OO).

But, we shouldn't wait around to see what happens. With what is happening, I think that we need to take steps to promote KDE. This probably means that an RPM based distro is needed. This should be a basically stock distro -- all enhancements to Linux should be KDE based in such a distro.

This should be quite easy to do since the RedHat installer is freely available and if we want a stock Linux distro all that is needed is a packaged distro based mostly on Linux From Scratch and/or Fedora RPMs.

I emphasize that KDE needs its own distro because KDE includes the enhancements which various distros have developed. So, KDE will always be in conflict with distros that have their own (possibly proprietary) enhancements to Linux because KDE also includes these.

Commercial support would help -- would the Kompany be interested? But, we could probably just have the ISO on line and get one of the CD sellers to distribute it.

We also need to address larger software issues rather than just make better widgets.

1. Will we soon have something that is interoperable with Evolution and M$?

2. Have we considered applying for a Flash license and directly incorporating Flash support into Konqueror (with a KPart) rather than using a plug-in?

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/licensing/sourcecode/

3. Is KDE doing anything with the Helix plug-in project?

https://www.helixcommunity.org/

4. Will Karbon14 be able to import/export Flash files?

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/licensing/fileformat/

There is already some OSS code base for this. Search on: "SWF" at SourceForge.

5. GNOME integration is needed. But this can be one way. If you install a GNOME application in a KDE based Linux system, it should be added to the menu, icon and MIME system without any human intervention. If this isn't currently possible then something like: KAppFinder (a wizard) is needed.

6. Our native solutions need to be able to play streaming Audio/Video from web sites.

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JRT

by Henrique Pinto (not verified)

1) Kontact? Yeah, I know it is not ready yet, but it will soon have this feature.

5) Huh? Isn't it like this already? I have an entry for file-roller in my menu, and I'm sure I haven't added it manually (note to self: why do I have file-roller installed?)

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

> 5) Huh? Isn't it like this already? I have an entry for file-roller in my menu,
> and I'm sure I haven't added it manually (note to self: why do I have
> file-roller installed?)

I really don't know how much progress has been made. I have three GNOME applications installed and they put the 'Desktop' file in two places:

{prefix}/share/gnome/apps/Applications
{prefix}/share/applications/gedit.desktop
{prefix}/share/applications//gnumeric.desktop

The first one is compatible -- a link does it.

And I assume that 2 & 3 are for the VFS -- they contain: "Categories". I don't know how that works in KDE yet because the menu in KDE-3.2Beta1 is a mess -- half of the stuff is in: "Unknown".

The icon issue seems to be solved. KDE now looks in: {prefix}/share/pixmap, so a link is all that is needed if you use a different prefix.

And, I don't know how GNOME handles MIME types.

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JRT

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

Yes I tried the KDE-3.2Beta1 and the VFS Menu works. A link and KDE finds the GNOME icons.

However, there was no file association for Gnumeric. There is a MIME type (the one that comes with KAppFinder) but no association.

HOWEVER! That "vanity" background in KFM is very very unusable.

Perhaps it only gives you a sever headache in 2 minutes if you have astigmatism (I do :-)).

I guess that this is just part of this syndrome that developers don't seem to consider that their favorite eye candy is detrimental to usability.

And there is yet another icon on the Konqueror toolbar: FSViewPart. Was this put there because the authors of the application thought it was a real cool application? or did some one consider usability?

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JRT

by Anonymous (not verified)

> Was this put there because the authors of the application thought it was a real cool application?

Did you consider that any kpart for Konqueror appears there as reason?

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

> Did you consider that any kpart for Konqueror appears there as reason?

No, I didn't. What I considered was that only commonly used icons should be there. There is a limited amount of space and you have to make objective design decisions.

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JRT

by cloose (not verified)

0. KDE Distribution --> Knoppix
1. Evolution/M$ --> Kontakt/Kolab
5. GNOME Apps --> XDG menus (mime system is in the making AFAIK)
6. Audio/Video --> Doesn't Kaffeine or KPlayer support this?

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

>0. KDE Distribution --> Knoppix

This bootable CD distro is too specialized to be considered a KDE distro. We need something to replace RedHat.

1. Evolution/M$ --> Kontakt/Kolab

Yes as soon as we ship 1.0 this should do it.

>5. GNOME Apps --> XDG menus (mime system is in the making AFAIK)

Yes the menues work in KDE-3.2 -- well at least as well as the KDE ones. But, AND is AND and the MIME types and file associations need to work as well.

> 6. Audio/Video --> Doesn't Kaffeine or KPlayer support this?

It is the: "Embeded Media Player" that needs a little work. I can download and play a QuickTime movie trailer with Kaboodle and the Xine library (x86 only as you still need the actual Windows DLLs). Three cheers for the Xine people. However, they won't play in the "Embeded Media Player". The plugin (or KPart) does load but nothing happens. Just a small detail that needs to be finished.

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JRT

by anonon (not verified)

>>>It is the: "Embeded Media Player" that needs a little work. I can download and play a QuickTime movie trailer with Kaboodle and the Xine library (x86 only as you still need the actual Windows DLLs). Three cheers for the Xine people. However, they won't play in the "Embeded Media Player". The plugin (or KPart) does load but nothing happens. Just a small detail that needs to be finished.<<<

kmplayer works reasonably well embedded in konqueror, and the mplayer project apparently have managed to decode QuickTime Sorenson3 natively (no windows dll needed).

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

There was some reason that I couldn't install MPlayer. Video card support perhaps?

Actually Xine does Sorenson quite well. It is the *sound* that requires the DLLs. Go figure!

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JRT

by anon (not verified)

> Yes the menues work in KDE-3.2 -- well at least as well as the KDE ones. But, AND is AND and the MIME types and file associations need to work as well.

It was too late for KDE 3.2 to support the fdo MIME spec, but 3.3 should.

by Robert DeSutter (not verified)

Hey....What's up with Suse media player...why doesn't it play the video from CNN.com? It requires windows media player. Aren't there any substitutes?

In fact, none of my video works properly!

Can someone help me?

by gerd (not verified)

Suse has a market that requests KDE. They cannot sell Gnome. the customer counts and Suse is the bigger player than ximian. I would rather ask for a better kde support of ximian.

by Rayiner H. (not verified)

Its nice to see some attention being paid to the toolbar situation. IMHO, its one of the principle reasons GNOME apps still look more polished than KDE apps. First the context menus, now this. Its just great.

OT: I'm a little depressed about the whole Novell thing. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I don't want KDE to become another example of superior technology being killed off by business interests.

by Paul (not verified)

I agree, it can seem a bit disconcerting. To paraphrase a few others re similiar situations; as long as there is one developer willing to work on KDE, it cannot be killed.

Remember, KDE and Gnome both were started by the community, not by any corporation.

by cloose (not verified)

And in KDE's case it still is a community project.

by Paul (not verified)

Aren't they both?

by Datschge (not verified)

Well, apparently Gnome got a community of commercial players so I guess you are right. ;o)

by anonymous (not verified)

That might be true.

IMHO SuSE's influence on KDE isn't as big as same people think. The number of KDE developers working for SuSE is really tiny compared to the total amount of KDE developers. So if SuSE really decides to pull their(!) plug on KDE I don't think that you would notice it much (development speed wise).

Except for all the thousands of SuSE customers complaining. :-)

by Thorsten Schnebeck (not verified)

Using a current CVS version of KDE I like the new composer toolbar.
But I still see the crypto-module selector and as a user of a permanent internet connection there is my standard change: I replace "save into outbox" with "save as draft".

Bye

Thorsten

by anon (not verified)

Both KDE and GNOME are in their infancy in terms of usage. Only time to tell if one will prevail over the other, or if something else will replace both of them (most likely). Neither one is going to disappear within five years though, probably.

by Mike (not verified)

Small babysteps that are towards GNOME, and alrger leaps, such as 1 million new chinese desktops powered by GNOME will eventually lead to a foothold in the Linux Desktop as strong as Microsoft's in the OS market.

These small steps are what count the most, exactly because both projects are in their infancy. If KDE had 500 million desktops and GNOME had 550 million, it would hardly make a big differnece, however now it does.

KDE is partly to blame, KD Eis not aggressive about getting corporate support, donations etc. They expect companies will flock to them, not vice versa and when you are a pretty new project, it won't happen that way.

GNOME has always been very encouraging of corporate participation and donations, much more than KDE, they have been much more assertive on these issues and it shows. GNOME has been working hard to become busienss ready and also governement ready by making their desktop much more usable and ACCESSIBLE.

Their license DEFINITELY helps, it is a large part of why they are being supported by more companies than KDE is. KDE really needs to identify with a large company, to build name recognition and trust.

by Dawnrider (not verified)

... Red Flag Linux uses KDE because of the better internationalisation and management facilities:

http://www.redflag-linux.com/source/Documents/redflag/Desktop32e.pdf

The same is true in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, India and most other contries with developing open source policies.

Commercial support is nice, but in the long term, Linux tends to see the better product winning out, which admittedly is surprising in such a capitalist culture, but there it is.

Honestly, I expect SuSE to keep on using KDE as their primary desktop environment, despite the Novell acquisition. Moreover, SuSE are finally becoming a challenger to RH in north america, where there was no one else before. That is a good thing. With Novell's corporate tools and HP and Gateway's distribution with new machines, the future is looking very bright for SuSE and the KDE. Add onto that the fact that RH has just abdicated the desktop market, and that Sun are still making a hash of their Gnome-based desktop and I am not so worried about corporate-driven Gnome dominance anymore.

KDE 3.2 should be more than ample for most desktops, achieving parity with Windows and OSX in terms of functionality, intuitiveness and ease of use, which is a great thing. Add to that the fact that Konqy is now very good, and that with Safari, we really do have a good alternative to IE now with a large installed base, and I am hopeful for open standards and the future of the web, too, especially with MS now not shipping IE 7 until 2006, with a majority of Windows users only having access to it by 2009.

Sufficed to say, I'm excited and eager to see what happens when we have Kernel 2.6 and 3.0, with Reiser4 and other additions. I'm also eager to see what happens for QT4 and KDE 4, where we get a chance to really push the boat out and add features beyond achieving parity with existing offerings! If all MS have for Longhorn are pretty window effects, WinFS meta-data searching, DRM and "better" security, then we stand on the threshold of an incredible change in the computing industry. We have 6 years, effectively, to develop new and compelling features. 6 years to beat Microsoft's crappy new features and establish new ways of thinking, working and using computers!

And I'll stop now, because I really am excited and impatient to see what the future holds.

by Joe (not verified)

God, are you full of it:

"KDE is partly to blame, KD Eis not aggressive about getting corporate support, donations etc. They expect companies will flock to them, not vice versa and when you are a pretty new project, it won't happen that way.

GNOME has always been very encouraging of corporate participation and donations, much more than KDE, they have been much more assertive on these issues and it shows. GNOME has been working hard to become busienss ready and also governement ready by making their desktop much more usable and ACCESSIBLE."

How does corporate partnerships have ANYTHING to do with usability? And who said a word about "flocking"? Please, learn the language of logic before you try to partake in an adult conversation.

Thank you.

by Mike (not verified)

"How does corporate partnerships have ANYTHING to do with usability? "

Usability is very important for businesses because it = increased productivity. The business doesen't care if you can customize your panel and look and feel well, as long as the unit runs the applications they need that is all they care about. Everything else is convenience, and often slows down productiviyu. Not because the users can't ignore the extra features, but because they like them, are curious about them, and will spend time fiddling with them sometimes.

Anyway, that isn't really usability, reducing options is not always a good thing to do to increase usability, because after a time you have a very usable product that isn't very useful. Usabiltiy means having features properly organized, with intuitive use and options that are useful.

"And who said a word about "flocking"? Please, learn the language of logic before you try to partake in an adult conversation."

Smartass its an opinion. From what I've seen GNOME has been more receptive to business requests, perhaps too receptive. KDE seems to expect that companies will come to them instead of KDE proposing a KDE solution to the company, sure its free but you still need marketing just like any other product.

My first post was aimed at responding to this

"Both KDE and GNOME are in their infancy in terms of usage. Only time to tell if one will prevail over the other, or if something else will replace both of them (most likely). Neither one is going to disappear within five years though, probably."

and the importance of early adoption. If you haad read my post you would know what it was about.

"flock" was used properly in the sentence and I was just emphasizing tha KDE is partly to blame for this and there are ways in which we could speed up KDE adoption and one way is to change the attitude I think many KDE people have.

"flock" simply means to quickly come to in large numbers, I don't know what you don't understand about this simple and commonly used word. It doesen't matter who used it, what matters is the whole sentence and topic not a single word. We don't all have the same vocabulary and we will use different words to illustrate different things. Obviously we are not drones and it doesen't matter if the word was used by someone else or not.

"Please, learn the language of logic before you try to partake in an adult conversation."

There is nothing illogical about using the word "flock" and if you want to counter something counter my ideas not my spelling or grammar. This is only the comments section, nothing to get worked up about, I couldn't care less about proper spelling and grammar here. Besides that, what you have said about "flock" about my illogical language use is not even correct. You can't just quote a word and expect people will know the entire idea of what you are saying.

Furthermore, how would you even know who here is an adult or not or who here is even a native english speaker. Think, I would like you to write proper Romanian.

And again, who really cares if I don't capitalize "I" would you correct me on that too? Who cares, the ideas are important not the presentation, not here. And again please explain how I used "flock" in the wrong way.

by Joe Schmoe (not verified)

"Who cares, the ideas are important not the presentation, not here."

Ummm. pardon me for saying, but wasn't this whole conversation ABOUT usability and presentation? Your comments bored me to the point that I skimmed, but it's amusing all the same. I can tell you love listening to yourself (even with all the errors in logic in grammar) and I wouldn't want to get in the way of the echo.

by Mike (not verified)

My comment was all about presentation and usability, I mentioned that it is one of the areas where GNOME is ahead, and the comment described how I think KDE presents itself to businesses.

How about actually mentioning some of those things and maybe you should learn some respect.

by fault (not verified)

Hmm.. responding to flamebait-ish comments with equivalent verbal patter isn't the smartest thing to do. But anyways,

usability is important for everyone. It isn't tied to businesses, it isn't tied to home users. It isn't tied to genius. It isn't tied to the mentally retarded. It benefits everyone.

KDE is a open source project that from the start, has been focused on providing use of use to the UNIX desktop. Usability has thus been a quite important goal in the minds of everyone involved with the KDE project. We aren't there yet in a prefectly usable solution, but we are slowly getting there.

by Asdex (not verified)

It's not hard to adjust Konqueror's toolbars to look good (KDE3.1+):
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=8999

by Jeff (not verified)

Mine too!

by Rayiner H. (not verified)

Mine three!

http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/Konqueror - Slashdot.png

But it would be nice if they came less cluttered out of box :)

by OI (not verified)

A step truly in the right direction.

by Ben Roe (not verified)

I've found that the Up button on the left like that confuses new users - for web browsing it's all but useless anyway. In fact, the default layout of toolbars in many KDE apps seems a bit odd - KMail is a good example of odd priorities. I know it only takes a few minutes to get things how I like it, but for many users the defaults are all they see.

My layout, FWIW:

http://benroe.com/images/konq.png

by anonymous (not verified)

Very nice. I'm glad you kept the Up button because I find that to be a very important feature. Just as I find the Zoom buttons to be important.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I must have missed something about the toolbars.

With two clicks, I know have 32x32 icons with text under them.

So, I don't understand how this is a new feature that needs to be added.

What I do agree with is the size of the text labels. There is no way to edit them and no way to use a font like: NimbusSanL-ReguCond (I mention that because it is a free font but Arial Narrow or Helvetica Narrow is what I really mean).

So, we need two new features:

Ability to edit the text labels for toolbar icons.

Ability to choose the font for the toolbar icons.

Note: if you have too many icons, you can remove them. Which icons the tool bars contain is fully configurable.

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JRT

by Henrique Pinto (not verified)

> I must have missed something about the toolbars.

Probably. Most of what's being discussed is already possible, the discussion is regarding defaults for the toolbars.

That means:
1) Default Buttons
2) Default Icon Size
3) Show text or not as default
etc.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I don't see changing the defaults as a major improvement.

I have Konqueror set up quite differently than the default -- more like Mozilla -- but I didn't think that I should suggest that the defaults should be changed.

Perhaps I should/they should be.

http://home.earthlink.net/~tyrerj/files/konq.png

Note that I prefer the small icons. After a while, you learn what they mean (and where they are).

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JRT