People behind KDE: Simon Hausmann

Tuesday, 20 March 2001  |  Inorog

The wonderful Konqueror/Embedded project, the DCOP bindings for the C language, contributions to Konqueror, KParts (and before that, OpenParts), KHTML and KOffice... all this work is courtesy of Simon Hausmann. Tink needed all her persuasive powers to make Simon submit to this interview for the well known weekly series. Have a thankful thought for her work while you enjoy Simon's answers.

Comments:

Re: People behind KDE: Simon Hausmann - Rob Kaper - 2001-03-20

That's funny.. I just started a project which will use Konqueror/Embedded. Since when can The Dot read my mind? :-)

Re: People behind KDE: Simon Hausmann - Gaute Hvoslef Kvalnes - 2001-03-20

Magic has always been an important part of KDE, and I believe the mind-reading stuff has been part of The Dot for some weeks already. Just look at Ettrich's quote at the bottom of the page - I hope the patch will make it into KDE 2.2 ;-) Regards, Gaute Hvoslef Kvalnes Norwegian (Nynorsk) KDE translation: http://i18n.kde.org/teams/no_NY/

Not far enough - Professional Software Developer - 2001-03-21

Konqueror/Embedded is good, but it doesn't go far enough. What KDE needs is KDE/Embedded, built from the same source base as KDE. So I can type 'startkde' to run KDE, then 'startkde --embedded' to run a stripped down, black and white version suitable for 320x200 displays. Desktop is on the way out, but we need a seamless binary-compatible transition path to palmtop devices. Writing an 'embedded' version of each app is out of the question. So KDE needs an 'embedded' mode where eevrything is 'debloaded' and scaled down at run time.

Re: Not far enough - reihal - 2001-03-21

I think desktop is on the way in, the latest iPaq comes with 64 MB RAM + X MB ROM. Forget black&white, grayscale maybe. Smaller and faster is always nice, though.

Re: Not far enough - Christoph - 2001-03-21

But I think he is right with having two modes of Kde/Kde-embedded. More and more people are getting used to mobile computing and wouldnt it be nice to transfer your contacts, notes whatsoever from your palm running Kde/embedded via infrared to your laptop running KDE(antialiased)using all the same applications ??

Re: Not far enough - Triskelios - 2001-03-22

Well, that'll have to be integrated into kdenox (KDE-no-X), for running KDE in the framebuffer (in Linux). Palmtop devices will use this, this as they don't run X. I haven't bothered to check much of the details on the progress, though.

Re: Not far enough - Nick Papadonis - 2001-03-23

NANO-X is an implementation of X Windows for embedded devices. There is also Tiny X. As far as getting KDE/palm integration, I say on getting KPilot/Korganizer/Knotes/Kab to work together perfect is a start. Stripping KDE to run in a 4 - 8 mb footprint might be difficult.

Re: Not far enough - Lee - 2001-03-23

KDE is very heavyweight it's made to do a rather lot. A simple window manager only and Qt embedded is all you need. Especially since the basic interface would probably have to be changed from the KDE one. What I'd like to see is a simple enviornment based on the KDE window manager.

I'm sorry... - Jørgen Adam Holen - 2001-03-21

J.R.R. Tolkien is dead.

Re: People behind KDE: Simon Hausmann - Daniel Molkentin - 2001-03-21

Hi Simon, Thanks for all your work and efforts throughout the last years and all the help you offered while being the humblest coder I've ever collaborated with. You simply rock! </daniel>

Re: People behind KDE: Simon Hausmann - Lukas Tinkl - 2001-03-21

... and I can only second that :-) Lukas

What about Mosfet? - Samawi - 2001-03-22

Hey, Tink: What happened to our (former?) hero Mosfet? I notice he's no longer on the list of folks to be interviewed. His fans would really like to know what he's up to these days! Samawi

Re: What about Mosfet? - Tink - 2001-03-23

>>What happened to our (former?) hero Mosfet?<< Our knight in shining armour has decided that he doesn't want to participate in an interview. I guess being too famous comes with a price. -- Tink

Re: What about Mosfet? - Roberto Alsina - 2001-03-23

Mosfet just doesn't want you to ask him about a specific picture. But I have a copy! I will blackmail him! And I will force him to put my copyright on all his code! And I will win fame and fortune! Oh, wait, ermmm... hey, what a shame he doesn't because he's a very interesting guy :-) And he would have answered FTE (maybe even KFTE ;-) for the question about favourite editor! Dammit!