The People Behind Quanta Plus

In this fascinating interview, Eric Laffoon and András Mantia give us a glimpse into the world of the Quanta Plus project. Read on for everything from tantalising references to Kommander, billed by Eric to be part of the foundations for the next generation desktop and user experience, to details of future plans for Quanta VPL (Visual Page Layout). We also launch a call for help from the users, either in the form of Quanta contributions or much-needed donations to help sponsor the work.

This interview was first conducted by the KDE.de team and recently updated for the dot.

1. Please tell us a bit about yourselves.

Eric L. Laffoon:

I'm a 46 year old confirmed tech addict. I began building electronics
projects at 9 years old surprising my dad by implementing a feedback
resister on the output stage of my Heathkit radio. (I got the idea from
his Harmon/Kardon schematic) I first programmed Fortran in Navy schools
in 1975 where I nearly aced the computer section. I have done a number
of things and fell into web work in the late 90s while using OS/2. In
1999 I decided to make the switch to Linux as it seemed to have all the
"mind share". The first thing on my agenda was to find a good web
development package.

András Mantia:

I'm a little boy compared to Eric with my 26 years. :) I'm of Hungarian
nationality, but I live (and was born) in Romania. I work with computers
since the beginning of the '90s, and I really love it. My first PC was
a ZX Spectrum clone, and I already wrote some programs on it (even a full
game). I finished university in 2000 and that same year I went to
Finland, where I worked for Ericsson (mobile systems). For the rest of the
story see below.

2. How was Quanta born? How did you get involved in the project?

Eric:

It was early 2000 when I saw an announcement for Quanta on Freshmeat. I had been looking for
something more advanced that the EPM editor I was using on OS/2. I
looked at Coffee Cup shareware, Visual Slick edit and a bunch of
free software. I had quickly come to prefer KDE to GNOME and was
looking for a good KDE app. The only half decent one was Webmaker
and it lacked a lot. Quanta was version 0.97 or so when I first saw
it and it was basically a stripped KDevelop with a KHTML
preview. It had no tag dialogs and few useful features but it was
cute. I wrote Dima and Alex out of frustration that this program
looked so good but didn't satisfy my needs as a web developer. To
my surprise they asked me for input and I specified a number of
things to make it better. In fact my focus was strictly on what
would get the job done the fastest. They had some good ideas too
like programmable actions but much of the interface and efficiency
was my specification.

Early in the development they mentioned
they would not have access to school computers soon and they lived
in a youth hotel in Kiev. I helped them to get into a house with a
phone line and later to get them a second computer. I don't think a
lot of people realize that despite what we imagine with OSS had I
not stepped up at the time Quanta might well have died an early
death.

András:
All I know is that Quanta was
started by Dmitry Poplavsky, Alexander Yakovlev and Eric. Alex and Dmitry
left the GPL'd Quanta project before 2.0 final came out, and they are
working now on the commercial version at theKompany.com. I was invited to join
the project around November 2001 by Eric. He found me as he had downloaded the
Kallery
application -- my very first application written for KDE. ;-)
At that time GPL'd Quanta was basically abandoned, and I became the only coder,
and the first step was to fix the most annoying bugs and make a stable 2.0 release.

3. Who else is (or was) involved with Quanta?

Eric:
It's only fair to mention Dmitry and Alex, even though it was not the
most fun when we parted ways, because they began the earliest versions.
Clearly I think András is the number one person to mention and I agree
with his other names listed. Marc Britton and Robert Nickel have been
great as have a
number of other people. Too many to name. While converting Quanta from
KDE 1 to KDE 2, Rich Moore helped out a bit. I miss Rich. He is a wealth
of knowledge.

András: First there is
Eric, who is devoted to this project and supports it from his own,
sometimes limited, resources. Alex and Dmitry should be mentioned
as they started the project, and currently some more or less active
developers help us, such as Marc Britton (author of Kommander), Robert Nickel (who wrote a good amount of
documentation for Quanta). Just take a look at the "Thanks
To" list in the About box.

4. How is the project organised? Do you know all developers or
contributors personally?

Eric: Largely I manage the project and leave
András to focus on the internals. I have a loose management
style because I believe that people need to work from their
passions. András and I are very close in our vision and
thinking and while I have input on technical issues I trust him
implicitly. I first coded over 25 years ago and have coded in many
languages but I've only done a little C++ and only since I started
on Quanta. When I was left alone with Quanta I was determined to
learn and code if I had to do it all myself. I can read C++ fairly
well and I keep saying I will spend a few weeks playing some
time. I know that I will, however I'm forced to accept that my
project management and business activity must come first and they
take a lot of time. Many times I wish I could switch places with
András as it would probably be more fun. ;-)

I take input
from users and from my own use of Quanta as a starting point for
what I want to do. I read every day about Linux developments, new
programs and what is happening in high tech. I converse with
developers and then I work to put together a plan. I try to get
other volunteer developers to commit to small pieces of code and
have András be the answer man. Because I've owned businesses
and run crews of independent contractors I think I have a bit of an
edge in the mindset to manage this type of project. It is much
different than having employees dependent on you. You have to be
able to inspire and help people develop confidence in what they are
doing. I like that a lot.

I have met everyone involved with
Quanta through Quanta. I happen to think that is very cool. It's
also quite humbling. You really have to have a degree of success
before you can attract more people to help you succeed. Recently
I've seen more interest and people coming in like Adam Treat and
Nicolas Deschildre who are working on WYSIWYG, or as I like to call
it, VPL (Visual Page Layout). ;-)

András:
I know none of them personally. Some coordination is done by Eric, who usually
defines what should we implement, when should we make a release, he writes
the articles, updates the Quanta site and so. He is the project manager. But
if we are talking about coding, then I'm the one who makes the decisions. :-)
The discussions usually are taking place on our development list. Since the
beginning we have had only one IRC discussion, before the 3.0 release. This is also
because I don't have a permanent internet connection. Before I had a very slow
dial-up one, now it's far better, but still dial-up and not so cheap. I have
to thank to Eric who supports me having this internet connection.

5. What are your future plans for Quanta?

Eric:
Quanta has several key areas I have plans in. For one, having András at
the development helm means that I know he will be constantly looking to
improve the internals and since he has full time exposure he will be
very much on top of it. I have immense trust in him. I know that he is
working on his passion and he always has the right answer so I have a
very collaborative relationship with him.

András and I are focused on having the best markup and script tool anywhere.

My vision for Quanta is to make it the next "killer app" on Linux. Even
though the use of web development tools is currently limited among computer
users I feel there are two key aspects people overlook when they say that
Quanta is not well suited for this mantle. First of all there are a lot of
web developers. These people are generally more technically inclined than
the average user and in marketing terms are called "early adopters". This
is because they each tend to have a number of friends who look up to them
as being knowlegable on computers. Early adopters lead the masses in
coming to any new technology or product. The other reason is that I believe
that web page and document creation in various markups is going to become
more common among users and this means leading here would make Quanta and
KDE a more desirable work environment. I'm very excited and also humbled
be a part of KDE. Whether you look at the desktop, the development
environment or the people you can't help to be impressed.

The key to bringing Quanta to the level of my vision is very simply man
power. Granted KDE is an extremely efficient development platform, but to
reach the heights of application competence in something so diverse as
general markup and scripted web interfaces you need to cover a lot of ground.
The idea I've been working to advance is that we can do this, and this is
very important for people to understand, much better by creating a two
tiered development model. What we are working to do is to make it possible
for users to extend Quanta. Examples of where we are working on this are
templates, scripts (new in 3.2), DTDs (largely just XML), programmable
actions, customizable toolbars and custom Kommander dialogs. We want to
focus our developers on the internals that cannot be done by users like
code optimizations, debugging, universal features, visual page layout and
the like. I believe to date we have not adequately gotten the message out
so I will state it clearly.

We are looking for a few dozen users to step out of "consumption mode"
and into "community mode" and help us flesh out the features we're adding.

My goal is that by the release of 3.2 Quanta will be considered to be a
viable candidate for best in class web development tool on any platform
and not just among free software! I believe it's going to take some of
our userbase stepping up to help us take on new DTDs, add templates
(though we will add some soon) and more to make this a certainty.

I would be remiss not to mention Nicolas Deschildre and Adam Treat helping
us to bring WYSIWYG, or as I prefer to call it Visual Page Layout (VPL), to
Quanta. We have a positive expectation of delivering a fairly complete
implementation for KDE 3.2.

András:
To make Quanta the best SGML/XML/Script tool. ;-) Seriously, my plans are to make Quanta
even more usable, more customizable. The basics are there since the 3.0
version, but there is a lot of things that must be done before I say, that
yes, this is what I wanted. One of the weakest points of Quanta is its
slowness while editing certain kind of documents. 3.1 is a step forward, but now
I'm working on an even faster and better parsing algorithm. Otherwise I don't
want to talk about new features. We have a todo list on our web page, and you
can check out the wishes on the KDE and Sourceforge bug site.
I know, most users would like to see a WYSIWYG editor. This is not a
priority for me, but we have recently had contributions in the area, as Eric mentioned.

Short and middle term plans are bugfixing (as usual), off-page parsing,
improved autocompletion, integrating some new, cool plugins, adding new
DTDs and toolbars to the Quanta tree, so it can be used by another group
of people, not just by those who write HTML/XHTML/WML pages.

6. Why did you choose the GPL for the Quanta project and what
are your thoughts on Open Source in general?

Eric:
Originally I confess I was not too sure about the GPL. We were debating
on license early on and Dmitry and Alex wanted GPL. It looked to me like
with the code we were using from kwrite and other programs we pretty
much were locked in. Most of the original Quanta was just reuse. When we
were presented with the opportunity to produce a commercial application
I was surprised that the idea was that the GPL'd version was to be left
to wither and die. That caused some soul searching for me. Aside from
the fact that I did not believe there was much money to be made in small
retail software I began to feel very strongly about programs being
available via the GPL. I have received a number emails from people
around the world thanking me for making it possible for them to find
work developing web sites and bettering their lives. I could not put a
value on that but I would not part with it for any price.

To me software has been a lottery for many people. Bill Gates was in the
right place at the right time to leverage a shoddy operating system into
a fortune. I don't like lotteries. I don't really want to receive money
unless it is for something I did to add value to someone's life. I don't
believe the lesson of "getting lucky" and raking in money for years to
come for an idea at the expense of all others is a good one, or
realistic. Everyone has the power to bring about positive changes in
their lives, but sometimes they need a little help. Open source software
levels the playing field and allows someone who can barely afford a
computer to learn the skills to compete with those who have all the breaks.
To me tools should always be secondary to products in costs. I
think software that is charged for should be contracted or have some
explicit merit for its cost. Commodity software should be free or cheap.

I am a strong advocate of GPL'd software and I don't really understand
why more businesses haven't recognized the tremendous advantage in
leveraging this development model for superior and inexpensive tools.
Businesses will always compete on factors other than tools as most tools
will be available to all competitors. The GPL offers coop-etition advantages
for all parties except software retailers and fits better with vertical
market uses. The arguments against it offer stagnation, and the inevitable
eventual inaccessibility of too much good work.

András:
I always liked the idea of free software, and never thought that I will
publish my code which was written in my free time under a proprietary
license. If you work for a company, then it's OK to do non-free software, but
if you do it for your own fun, let's share freely with the world. And GPL is
a nice free software license. Right now I don't work on Quanta in my free
time, but I do it full time, and it is even more fun.

7. If publishing free software doesn't make one rich, how do
you earn your living? Is Quanta sponsored in any way?

Eric:
At one time I intended to make my living directly from Quanta, though
now I do indirectly. I own and operate
Kitty Hooch Catnip
and before you say anything I have been really busy so
I hope to finish making my site impressive soon. ;-) We sell a super
premium product, the only one guaranteed cats will love it, to pet
stores, online and at open markets, holiday bazaars and pet shows. In
2001 it was a side business, In 2002 we made a difficult transition and
in 2003 we expect to begin earning what it will take for a major
expansion.

Since the beginning I have sponsored Quanta development out of my
pocket. We have had some donations which we appreciate very much.

I'd like to note that coming into 2003 we had some slow months and now
we are looking at considerable expense to expand. Expansion is not
optional. Demand is through the roof! We need to further expand in 2004
to a new location where we can finally produce on the level we need
to realize our long term goals. This will enable me to look at the
possibility of helping other related projects too. I want KDE to have
everything I need application wise at a level that is second to none.
At this time I would like to be giving András more as he deserves it.
However until I cover our expansion expenses everything spent elsewhere
is costing me many times that down the road.

It should be made clear. Quanta is sponsored, mostly by me, and by
miscellaneous small donations. Making
a small donation
to the project is the best way to keep me in a
good mood instead of thinking about what I could buy with all the
money I'm spending. ;-)

András:
Right now I depend on Eric. He sponsored Quanta in the beginning, and starting
from the middle of year 2002 he was able to sponsor me. There are no big
figures here, all I can afford from this sponsorship is the (dial up)
internet connection, paying my bills, buying some food for us (I have a
wife...) and such. If there are unexpected expenses, then it is not enough,
but I've decided to work full time for Quanta, even for less money than I
could get from a company where I would develop proprietary software under
Windows using MFC...

I would therefore like to mention again that we have a donation
page
which is even accessible from within Quanta itself
(Help->Make a donation). It's easy to donate for those who use
PayPal but we are certainly open to other means and types of
donations. Every small amount helps ease my and Eric's job.

Of course, if there is a company that would like to sponsor Quanta
development, do contact us. I would really like to focus on Quanta
development in the future, but this would mean some secure income
and what is considered a small amount for a company can make the
difference for one man. The other reason why I accepted to work
full time on Quanta is that I've made some savings in the past
(from my former job in Finland at Ericsson) and can therefore
survive one or two months without a job, but I think it's
completely understandable that I would like to use those savings as
little as possible.

8. What are your favourite tools under KDE?

Eric:
Quanta comes to mind. ;-) Beyond that Gideon
is very cool. I really like Cervisia. It's
great for CVS and I like to do web work from a CVS repository.
KFileReplace is very nice for multi directory find and replace with
wildcards. Kompare is very nice too. I suppose I better mention Kallery
so András doesn't get mad. ;-) I'm also a big fan of KSpread and I'd
like to see some improvements there. Actually Kommander is becoming my
favorite tool along with Quanta. I'd really like a great database tool
but knoda looks promising.

András:
I love KDevelop, and I'm really wish to see Gideon becoming more
stable and usable. I'm already using it now, but it still has some annoying
bugs, but they are less and less. I'm proud that I was the one who fixed some
of them. :-) All what I can say is that KDevelop made me forget about Delphi,
which I think was the best IDE under Windows. And of course the Qt/KDE
libraries also helped me in this case. These are the best libraries in the
area so far!

I like also some other tools, some of them appear in Eric's list.
What do I use on daily basis? Gideon, Cervisia, KMail,
Konqueror, Konsole, KwikDisk and Kate. K3b is also nice for burning CDs.

9. What are your dreams for the desktop of the future? How far are we from the ideal desktop?

Eric:
I don't know how much looks matter for me. To me KDE 3.1 Keramik is
already beautiful. In the looks and use department
Slicker
is somewhat impressive.

However my desktop of the future would revolve around Kommander. I'll
explain.

Most people think of software as shrink wrap or commodity software.
however most software is actually in house or vertical market packages.
So if you have an out of the box install you have lots of great tools
but what you don't have is "your" application. You have word processors
and spreadsheets and calendars and email... but until you work with them
they are not configured to do what you want. If you have a system
engineer sit down with you they could take the various programs and
customize them as well as work on basic templates for files, etc... When
the programs are integrated by common dialogs and scripts then it
becomes a far more productive desktop. It becames your application, not
just a bunch of general applications. This integration could be far more
easily managed by the average person if they had a tool that allowed
them to exchange all relevant information, settings and data between
applications using dialogs and scripts to complete the integration. That
is what will be possible with Kommander and fully DCOP enabled
applications.

The desktop of the future allows for all applications to interact
seamlessly, automates regular tasks and enables you to structure your
work flow efficiently to avoid duplication of effort and utilizing the
best tools at hand. I would say that this is becoming available now but
if we take the right direction in the next 1-2 years we could see
dramatic improvements. To my mind, once you "get it" there is nothing
else close. The current desktop star is a monolithic "one size fits all
" approach which is not the best but works because it handles some small
degree of personalization and customization for users. Imagine if we
took these concepts and tied them all together. Kommander should be a
big part of the new seamless desktop.

András:
I usually don't dream about desktops (maybe sometimes about coding...) ;-) The
current desktops fulfill my requirements, what I would like to see are more
good applications. Sometimes the core of an application may be good, but the application itself is not very usable.

10. What kind of hardware do you have and what OS do you use?

Eric:
I just run Linux. I do have several old copies of Windows but I can't
remember the last time I booted one. I have a local network with
currently three systems and a firewall from an older system. I've been
running Mandrake exclusively after trying all the mainstream distros but
I'm switching my system over to Gentoo before January. My system is
loaded with an Athlon XP 1700 overclocked to 1900+, 512 MB RAM, 90 GB disk
space and a 19
inch monitor. I also have an Athlon 700 in my wife's office with a 17
inch monitor and mom's old K6-500 with a 15 inch monitor that will be
moving into our production area or as an entertainment unit. I'm going
to upgrade to an Athlon 2000 soon because I do a fair amount of
compiling... and I can't get over András having a system that much
faster than mine. ;-)

I will probably get a notebook in 2003 and my whole business is being
run off my local net along with a remote server. I intend to work on
enhancing that to be a model of efficiency.

András:
I mostly work on an Athlon XP2000+ with 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD and a
Hansol 17" monitor. I built it from parts, as I don't trust pre-made
systems. And of course, I use Linux (SuSE 8.0, but quite modified, as I
compiled lot of things from source). I have an older Compaq laptop, which has
SuSE 8.0 and Win98 on it, but I almost never boot Windows. KDE is self
compiled on both of them. For developing I use KDE HEAD, as my
current internet connection makes it possible to update from time to time.

11. What do you do in your spare time, apart from working on
Quanta? ;-)

Eric:
Is there such a thing as spare time? I've been checking and I only seem
to get 24 hours a day which is hardly enough. It seems like forever
since I took a day off. Work
for me is diagonally across the hall from my bedroom. I have put in as
much as 20-30 hours a week on Quanta while working seven days a week the
rest of the time from when I get up until I go to bed. So if you want
to push my buttons write and say you'd like to help but you don't have
time... just be sure you can show me 100 hour weeks. ;-)

I do have some things l like to do. I find movies relaxing and I have
been a musician since I was 14. I have set aside my instruments for the
last several years but I plan to set up a new recording studio in 2003
and begin playing again. I have been working on the lyrics for an album
to honor my dear mother who I lost unexpectedly while driving her back
to Oregon on August 31st, 2001. I also enjoy going to the gym and
bodybuilding. Actually for a guy my age (46) it is my primary defense
against getting old and how I keep my energy up. My
goal is to drop to 10% or less body fat this summer and finally
show off great abs at 46. After 20 years you
realize the odds are decreasing if you don't get with it. ;-)

Aside from that I have developed a passion for hand rolled cigars over
the years. They force me to relax for an hour and ponder. I've come to
appreciate that a lot, as well as the fact that they have been made the
same for over 150 years, touched by 100 craftsmen each and aged for
years. You can't even say that about wine. I know András says he
wouldn't smoke and he likes chocolate. I like chocolate too but it
gathers around my waist... and I can't smoke it. ;-)

I hope in 2003 to get my pilot's license and by 2004 to begin assembling
kit aircraft. I am a history buff and would love to have replica
warbirds with laser tag systems because dogfighting with your friends
has to be a blast!

András:
I like to travel in the nature, and I like to climb mountains. The mountains
are one of the reasons why I moved back to Romania.
And another thing is listening to music. It's great that I can do that even
while working. ;-) The first thing I bought in Finland from my first salary
was a Technics receiver and two 100W speakers. Unfortunately the CD prices
are high, and I'm lucky if I can buy one in two months. The selection in Romania
is also very limited.

12. Any final thoughts and comments?

Eric:I'd like to make a special mention of
Kommander,
a DCOP-enabled dialog builder and executor.

Marc Britton
and I were working with Kaptain 0.7 and decided
to build Kommander instead. In simple terms it uses "text
associations" with widgets. So you can create strings by
manipulating widgets and output them. You can create custom
strings to input into an editor like Quanta for PHP functions or
classes or you can launch programs. You can even use internal shell
scripting for logic as well as DCOP communications and running
scripts or programs with the dialog. Kommander dialogs are
essentially Qt
Designer
UI files using standard widgets that have been
modified to work with Kommander. The dialog designer is actually a
stripped and modified Qt Designer run as a KDE application. It is
even possible to create the XML for the dialog on the fly with
scripting languages.

Kommander is what I call "application glue"
because it can stitch KDE applications together into one seamless
desktop application. In my mind that is the next killer
app... being able to make any app interact via user created
dialogs. This little program gives any KDE application its own user
dialog engine, especially useful if it has a solid DCOP
implementation. Look for docs and demos on the Quanta site.

Thanks to everyone who has been so kind in their praise of Quanta. I
would never imagine I would have the priviledge to manage a project like
this. It is a total accident that I arrived here but now I would not
give it up for anything. Most of all I wish I could share with everyone
just how wonderful it feels to be part of something like this. What
we're doing matters to people. Knowing that I am making a positive
impact in so many lives exceeds any financial rewards. I wish everyone
reading this could experience this. In fact you can. I encourage
everyone to realize that being a community requires much more than just
consuming. Someone has to produce, and that is where the real reward is.

It is so obvious and cliche to say "send in your donations" but in fact
for many of us it is so easy it doesn't really cost us anything.
Right now each and every donation I've received has been meaningful and
helpful. Thanks to all who have contributed. Help us
make Quanta a good tool for Zope, Java and XML. Help us with templates. Find some
small but worthwhile thing you can give back... because what I've
learned in this experience is that the old saying really is true... it
is better to give than to receive. What you do that we don't can become your
own little subproject in Quanta... Your own little world.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to read this interview and my
ramblings. ;-) Most of all thank you for helping to make Quanta perhaps
the most popular Open source web development tool and certainly on
Linux and KDE.

See you on the net...

András:
Yes, help is wanted. First we need financial help, as I wrote above. But of
course developers are also welcome -- be sure that we will find a job for you!

And the thank you's: first of all I would like to thank Eric, as he
"discovered" me, and showed me that it's possible to fulfill my dream of making my living doing something I enjoy. I trust him and I think he is a great man for sponsoring GPL software development. More should follow his example -- I would certainly do the same if I could.

There are others to thank, most importantly my wife
and my parents. They have accepted that I've choosen this not so secure way to earn my living, as it's more important to feel good and enjoy life than to grow rich and depressed. Of course, this doesn't mean that I don't want to earn more money.
:-)

To the users: Please try out the latest version of Quanta from KDE CVS, contribute and
report bugs. If you haven't noticed yet, we now have a user mailing list

Thanks for inviting me to this interview.

Special thanks to Andreas C. Diekmann and Klaus Staerk for sending us the English version of this interview.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Michael (not verified)

Why so complicated? The only IMO simple thing I'm requesting here
is the ability to open and hide a file selector with separate folder
and file view on key press. In HomeSite you can press F9, the source code
gets narrower and docked on the left hand side there is a file selector which
disappears when you press F9 again. It's so simple it's difficult to describe
it better. This is something I really miss and the functionality is basically
already there in Quanta. But there are some bugs in Quanta which prevent me from
doing this. I would be really glad if you fixed this one day. But even without
that it's a fine product, so I'm patient.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

You're talking making the file tree on the left collapsable? This is something we've wanted to get to for some time. We may be adapting some of the UI functionality of Gideon too. At least one developer has expressed interest in doing that.

by m. (not verified)

Are you planning support (k)vim part in quanta?

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

Not specifically. ;-) But it will most likely happen. We are getting closer to where we able to do so without it being too difficult. However it would probably happen a lot faster if a motivated coder were to want to join the project with that objective.

by ian reinhart geiser (not verified)

Its already there, and has been there for some time. You see Quanta uses KTextEditor to do all of its editing. So KVim part can be used. Although I must warn you VIM is a very primitive editor, and may not do everything you want it to do. Kate is the best, but the Qt Editor is getting better to, especially for C-like languages. Kate has some neat features like code folding, code completion, syntax hl, and dynamic word wrap.

Word is there is a NEdit part on the way too, again, limited but allows Geeks to be as geeky as possible.

Really the Vim stuff will gain you nothing more than some Geek factor and a good case of turrettes syndrome.

Cheers
-ian reinhart geiser

by fault (not verified)

> Really the Vim stuff will gain you nothing more than some Geek factor and a good case of turrettes syndrome.

And a great deal of added producivity!

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

> > Really the Vim stuff will gain you nothing more than some Geek factor and a good case of turrettes syndrome.

ROFL!

> And a great deal of added producivity!

It's not that I'm against making it available but it will lose features compared to the current editor. Look at what Ian listed. I would really conjecture that it could add that much productivity, especially sacrificing things like code completion. The real key as I'm told is the key bindings and scripts you can set up... however note the new Actions dialog I posted here (in another thread). Quanta currently has the ability to do quite a lot with keystoke binding and actions. Actions can run scripts in any language and interact with the editor. In CVS we're improving the DCOP bindings and you can now fully release project actions to make semi polymorphic project keystroke actions. (There's some geek appeal ;) CVS has new code shortcuts that can enable you to use "js" and Alt-J to create Javascript tags for instance. Kommander dialogs can be helpful even to vim types on large complex PHP classes...

Every time I try to see if there is something I'm missing and I engage in discussion on the vim mystique it comes down finally to the difference being binding some of the cursor movement keys. Let's be fair. Quanta is already one hell of a productive environment and lots of vim users are getting hooked. I seriously wonder how many will switch back to the default editor for better features instead of staying for old keystrokes once it's available.

by Andras Mantia (not verified)

Just a correction: the basics are there. Last time when I tried to use KVim in Quanta didn't worked, possibly due to a bug in the KTextEditor implementation of KVim. I haven't played with it recently, but as I would to make more independent of Kate part itself, and rely only on the KTextEditor interfaces, it may be so that KVim will be usable in Quanta starting from version 3.2. But I would expect to feature losses when you switch to the vim part. But there aren't promises. ;-)

Andras

by Lovechild (not verified)

I happen to suffer from Tourette' Syndrome and I also like VIM... -- No I had Tourrette' LONG before I discovered VIM, so don't use that as proof for your theory.

- David Nielsen

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

I just wanted to thank Navindra and the editors for the good press. Of course thanks goes to Andreas and Klaus for the original interview. It's both humbling and gratifying to get the attention we do here at the Dot. I realize a lot of that comes from having a large user base too. I can't say how much I appreciate that as well. We have great users. On the weekends I do the Portland Saturday Market with Kitty Hooch. I strike up conversations with other vendors there in the morning and come to find out they do their web sites with Quanta. It's really a very cool experience. Everyone I talk with is very positive. If they're not running KDE their friend is.

Quanta has been a tremendously positive experience and I just want to express my appreciation for all who continue to make it so gratifying and larger than the sum of it's parts. Enjoy!

by Bert (not verified)

Nice option. I think Dreamweaver is a very nice tool with some bad IDE. Quanta may fill the gap. I hope you will better support CSS than Mozilla-Composer. And there will be some code cleanup utilitys plugged into, for Word html ecc.

by Androgynous Howard (not verified)

Whenever I want to convince somebody to try out KDE, I just have to let them look over my shoulder while I do some work with quanta and konqueror. Sooner or later they will ask me where they can get those cool applications for windows. I tell them that they can't, because these are unix applications. Then I burn them a knoppix cd to try it out at home and they are hooked. Works every time.

Thanks a lot to eric and andrás for your good work.

A.H.

by V. B. (not verified)

For brasilian guys. If you are thinking about Knoppix like a penguin marketing tool, give a chance for Kurumim. It's small, could be burned at a mini-cd, pretty beautiful and 100% brasilian portuguese. A gret KDE marketing tool.

http://www.guiadohardware.net/linux/kurumin/

:-D,

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

Ah-Ha! Quanta is a killer app... and that means you have to be one of our best "hit men" as it appears to be a big hit with your friends. Now for a little extra razzle dazzle throw in a dash of Kommander for something they surely don't have and show them how easy it is to make a dialog for your custom PHP functions and launch it from a toolbar or keystroke. Add that to a live preview test bench (load your project on your local server and set the project preview) and they will need a tall iced coffee to get the glazed look out of their eyes. ;-)

by AC (not verified)

While I appreciate, maybe even adore your spirit to work full-time on free software for little pay: if you can not earn enough money by working on free software, you shouldnt do it. Free software is nice, I believe in it as well and spend the largest part of my spare time working on it. But I will not give up my financial security for it, and I don't think that anyone should.
If you don't take care of yourself because you deserve it, then do it for the other developers. By working for too little money you practically devalue your work, and by releasing it as free software also the work of all other developers. In the end free software can only work when somebody pays for it, just like for proprietary software. There may be no margins that are comparable to Microsoft's with free software, but programmers should not worry about buying a CD either...

by MrGrim (not verified)

It's been a while since I fed the trolls... so here goes.

There are these things that many peopl ehave called beliefs or ideals. You might have some, hell financial security might be one of them. Many of the people that dedicate so much time to free software do it because they believe it is right. Money does not have any effect on a person who truely believes in what he does. It's just like any other kind of volunteer work. You might not be able to handle not having financial security, but for others financial insecurity might not bother them. I know it does not bother me. I've been without money before, and it's not that big a deal really. While it is a sad thing we live in a world where people like these have to do this kind of thing for free, things are not going to change.

Speaking as someone who was just laid off this very day, I find the idea of just packing up my shit in my car and hitting the road to see where it takes me pretty exciting, and it wouldn't be the first time either. These people love what they do, don't try to take that away from them. Some things are just more important than money.

by David Syes (not verified)

KUDOS!

Well said, Mr. Grim.

I was laid off myself in Jan 2001, and it was frightening at first, sometimes inducing "rapid weight loss sessions" during the days....

I also develop (not a programmer, but a wysiwyg app user) interfaces and database tools for a zero-income-generating hobby of mine from which I hope to earn income by selling support rather than directly charging for my created apps. I develop them in Lotus Approach and Lotus WordPro, but hope someday there will be a tool that lets me create non-dba applications in Linux. I need and crave a non-server, non-ms-acess-imitating interface that is flexible enough to let me make it LOOK like what I want so I can work THEN go on to focus on my data mining or generation. (BOy, I wish I had 100,000,000 to buy SmartSuite off of IBM. I'd GIVE it to the OSDN & KDE so they could gut SmartSuite and give it new life instead of what it's currently doing: Languishing in windoze land, slowly dying and not even seeing a port to Linux (maybe WINE & other developments are not making it worh IBM's while???)

Too often too many of us (indivs as well as corps) "live" around money and image and status. Too much is hoarded and squirreled away, and the REAL denigration of "free" work is not that it is being DONE for free by those who love it, but rather the damage is being done by those who fail to help promote the free-maker. What I mean is that rather than poo-poo or not even pitch a dime, at the very LEAST the new observer can help promote or advertise or spread word to any possibly interested person.

Go Mr. Knoppix-burner. Keep getting them Hooked. & Mr. Grim, despite your handle, I like your reply.

David Syes

naughtycal-artkitekture.com

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

I was really touched by this. I just wanted to offer my encouragement and best wishes. I have personally grown so disillusioned with employers I only view myself as a viable employer. I have been wealthy and I have been poor... but most of all I prized being free above all else. Here's hoping you find real happiness and freedom where the road takes you.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

I don't know whether this is directed at Andras or me... and I don't know why. I can't fully speak for Andras but it is my understanding he is making comparable money to what he would be making in his local job market. However his local job market does not have a 40 hour work week, would have him on MFC and he would be spending a lot of time away from home and not have the freedom to come and go as he pleases and go visit family and work from his notebook. I believe he also loves what he does.

For myself I cannot devote the time I'd like which is why I sponsor him. My current business, Kitty Hooch, is in it's third year and has been very successful. Our present financial stress comes from an issue of low inventory temporarily affecting cash flow combined with required expansion expenses. I will not divulge my finances publicly but while I'm forgoing cable TV and other nicities right now while sponsoring Andras I expect to be able to afford to fly from Oregon to Europe later this year to meet with other KDE developers. I hope within a years time to be buying acreage and building large commercial greenhouses.

Andras and I both believe in what we are doing and I consider the last several years of financial stress since losing my mom to be a small price to pay for the rewards I have and will have. Anyone who reads what I have to say and knows me knows that I'm not looking to make money directly from open source, only indirectly. While I have grand plans for my finances my driving motivation is not primarily financial at all. My driving motivation is based upon what I believe is right. I'm doing my part to strike out for freedom and to make a better world. I am working to elevate those less fortunate around the world by giving them the tools to prosper to give them hope. I am working to promote a new age enlightenment for your children as opposed to a new age of big brother.

The argument about devaluing software is right out of the M$ handbook though. over 80% of all software is contracted and vertical market software. Quanta supports people in this area. Operating systems have already proven to be far more successful as community developed software. Applications are next. Shrink wrap software is a tool. Tool costs should be reasonable to what delivery costs are. That means Quanta should cost from around $1 a copy. Of course commercial software is far messier and greedier. Since a $1 charge is eaten up by the financial transfer costs down to about 65 cents it is fine for a few people to cover this cost as they see fit. I consider it a privlege to have spent thousands of dollars on Quanta development.

I really can't fathom the implication in this post that we are somehow selling out or something. Our objective is to have the type of impact on web development software that Linux has on operating systems and Apache on servers. It works for us. As to the rest... we really don't care. We care that people have the best tools and the tools promote freedom. We get to have our tools exactly as we want them in the deal. What's wrong with that?

by Andras Mantia (not verified)

You have a good point is saying that you shouldn't destroy your life. But the reality and the reasoning behind is much more complicated. As I said in the interview I used to work at Ericsson, Finland. My salary was quite nice, my work was quite easy, the stress was minimal, so you can say it was a "perfect" job. But I've left that work, came back to Romania, which is surely not the best place to live from economical point of view. But I had personal reasons to came back, and I accepted also by that time that it's very possible that I will never get so much money in the rest of my life. Many would think that I am stupid to do such a thing. Well, I may be stupid. ;-) Probably many others are that I'm stupid now to work on a free project full time. Well, I may be stupid. But I like it, and until I can cover my daily costs and don't have to use my savings, it's fine. I like to have money, I like fast cars and big houses, but that's not all in the life. Life wasn't easy here, and it still not easy at all. I grew up in an apartament, and altough the conditions here were bad and we were far from being reach, my childhood and the my life until today was more than acceptable. If I have much money it's nice, if I don't have, well, I try to live without it. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to earn more in a month/year. Right now it's at the acceptable level, when I can pay for my rent, the internet connection, for food and such mandatory things. We don't travel abroad often, we don't fly with planes, don't buy CD-s too often and we try to not spend much for "luxury" items. Ok, I don't know why I wrote the above here in a public place, but I won't delete it now.
The salary offered by that time for me was only a little higher that I get by working on Quanta full-time (and around 1/10th of my old salary), so even if I go to a company where I write closed source applications under Windows (using MFC) I could say that my work is undervalued. For my ego is much nicer to read the download counters that appear on Sourceforge or apps.kde.com, and to read the users feedbacks, and see that the users are trying to support us, than get $50-$100 more from a company. And I REALLY LIKE to program under KDE, I really like this community and I really enjoy to work with Eric. :-) He's a nice guy, he also stand on his own feet, and he admirable supports free software. Well, if I would be in a better financial situation, I would do the same. And I believe in free software and I also believe that you can build your life based on free software development. And I try to prove this (not for you, but also for my family ;-) ), altough we only took the first steps. We may fail, we may be successfull. It depends on great amount on us, but it also depends on supporting us.

Thanks for all of you, who have donated to us.

Andras

by Boris Kurktchiev (not verified)

Iread both yours and Eric's posts and I totally agree with both of you. Now I want to say hi to Andras from Bulgaria :). Now on the subject of money... the person that posted this is porably white American, 10 to 25 years of age with no life and a really screwed up job. Now i am not saying this to insult anyone but ever since I moved to tha States 3 years ago this is what i have seen. Every person that i know that talks about how they love open source but would not code in it or work on it are people who were screwed in life, period. I go to college and at the same time work for my college's unix labs, and servers admin. He is the same way... he loves unix he runs solaris 9 on every machine that he owns(all sparcs :) ) but every time I ask him why he doesn't release some of the really cool tools that he has written for maintaining his servers, workstations he starts with:Because back in the day when i worked for *this company*.... it is really annoying. Well thats my 2 cents.
Boris

by AC (not verified)

Sorry, wrong guess, neither American nor 10-25 years, and I produced a lot of open source code - in my spare time. I just wanted to say that there are things that are more important than open source, like financial security. How many 55 year old programmers are there?

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

> I just wanted to say that there are things that are more important than open source, like financial security.

What exactly is financial security? Howard Hughs had it... along with so much paranoia he locked himself in a sterile room and went insane. To me it is knowing that you can produce what you need to live happily. Eric Raymond did a little coding and wrote a book... then he got in on the VA Linux introduction as a token consultant and landed over $30 milion in stock. Who knows what he did after six months when he could cash it out. One should not discount the opportunities that could arise from being at the head of a high profile project when the M$ gravy train unravels. Who knows how much someone might want to pay us to speak or consult. Philandering ex presidents get a million dollars a speech. We would be delighted with much less. Besides, I own a business that has a huge income potential in the coming years. Right now it is challenging because I am doing it without borrowing anything from anyone. That makes today difficult and tomorrow mine. Andras is like a son to me and as I draw breath I will make sure his options are his choice. Nothing would make me happier than to see him be able to realize whatever he wants to.

> How many 55 year old programmers are there?

That's funny. My dad is much older than that, but he's a retired programmer. I'm reminded of the line in the movie "Almost Famous" spoken by the promoter suggesting the Rolling Stones won't be doing tours when they are grandfathers so grab it while you can. If we were talking framing houses I would see your point. Beyond that there is not much point. I grow catnip and now I program a bit less than when I banged out 6-10 hours a day building sites.

I personally believe, and I stand on this, that when you are an old man on your death bed you will be much less concerned with your former distractions on illusive security than on what you left for a legacy. I believe you will be a lot more concerned on what the world you are leaving behind will be like becuase of you that on what no longer matters. Knowing security is an illusion is freedom. People lose a job and their world turns upside down. Look at a wealthy person and you will see they crashed and burned financially not once, but several times in acrueing that wealth.

Andras and I have security in our passion and performance always being in demand and our partnership always being solid. Financial issues are transitory and opportunity is unlimited. Knowing this we have focused on what we believe to me most important and anre thankful for the freedom to pursue it.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

Hi. Welcome to America, often referred to as the only country that does not teach it's young it's system of economics. In my experience people who come here from other countries are amazed and enthused by the opportunities and people who grew up here have little concept because they have nothing to compare it to. They never lived without a security net. They never struggled for food or shelter. They never fled their homes for thier lives. America is a great place, but people should go tour third world countries for a year to get perspective.

However now that you're here and you see all this you can take advantage, as many immigrants do, and succeed and prosper. When you do, rememeber one more American axiom. We like a gracious winner. ;-) Try not to be hard on people or too easily stereotype them. It will leave you having to apologize from time to time. ;-)

BTW note that the Quanta team I am in Oregon, Robert is in California, Adam is in Boston, George is in Florida and several other members of our team are here in the US. So you should get out more... that way you can meet the right people. ;-)

Just a few words of encouragement - Quanta is the only KDE application I use presently, and it is probably the most productive application I have installed on my hard drive. I have churned out more valid HTML pages with Quanta than any other editors in years of online projects.

I'm not a developer though, so I'm going to pony up a cash donation just to encourage continued development of this very-usable-in-its-present-state application. The potential for this to be *the* Linux-based HTML editor is high.

I want to personally think Eric and András for their work and sacrifice on this. I cannot state enough how terribly crucial it is that we have a free impressive web development environment. I'd definitely put money on Quanta right now. I've encouraged so many people to try it out.

Thanks guys, seriously.

I think András would agree with me when I say how flattering this is. I'm beside myself. Knowing we've made a difference like this is the best thing of all. However there is still that matter of hard costs and you have put your money where your mouth is. So I already thanked you personally, now I can thank you publiclly. We will continue to to strive for excellence and innovation... a little more encouraged.

Thanks to you for your support...

by George Mitchell (not verified)

I have been using Quanta for a few years now. I used it to design and maintain my own web site (http://www.chinilu.com) which is intentionally simple (I personally detest web sites which make lavish use of flash and java and such just to project an image, but to each his own). I find Quanta to be a very useful and practical tool, a piece of software that I can always rely on to do the job.

Although I don't do web design professionally, a few months back, I was approached by a customer who wondered if I could fix a rather complex professionally designed website. Several other vendors had attempted to modify it using various WYSIWYG Visual web editors and the result was a mess. There was one particularly annoying defect that my customer had been told was unfixable. I had never tackled a project like that, but I decided to accept the challenge. With Quanta and some HTML documentation I was able to clean up the HTML and solve every problem and my customer was delighted. In addition I have created web sites for several other customers.

So I am really happy to see that Quanta continues to move forward. I especially look forward to a visual editor component. I think that a great visual web editor combined with a full featured text level editor like the current Quanta would be a real killer app! I also think that it is great that Quanta will be moving into the XML realm as well as XML is the future of the web and electronic commerce.

Hats off to Eric and Andras for a job well done!

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

It's George! Hi George. It's nice to see one of my old LinuxToday pals hanging around and saying good things about us. Thanks for your kind endorsement. Keep up the good fight, getting your customers solid systems they can run Quanta on. ;-)

by Andras Mantia (not verified)

I want to publicly say sorry that I said above that Eric is sponsoring me since the middle of last month. This is completely untrue, as he does since the middle of last year.

Sorry, Eric. ;-)

Andras

by Andras Mantia (not verified)

I want to publicly say sorry that I said above that Eric is sponsoring me since the middle of last month. This is completely untrue, as he does since the middle of last year.

Sorry, Eric. ;-)

Andras

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

Wow! Two apologies. Now I finally have proof you're not perfect. ;-)

Next time we let our wives proof read our interview... they never miss this kind of detail. ;-)

A better explanation is that this was an oversight as this interview was revised from what was done last year. Okay... you're back on our Christmas list. ;-)

by Soloport (not verified)

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I'm so dependent on CVS, for the usual reasons. Having Cervicia support in Quanta is one of the main reasons I've abandoned all other editors for Quanta -- and this only in the last month.

Excellent idea. Terrific job!

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

In the CVS version it actually can be loaded into a tab like a text file. This allows it to be left open and selected when you want it which has proven to be very cool. We have the kpart UI load and unload menu and toolbar items per tab on selection so you can have multiple plugins loaded and hop from one to another with correct UI. ;-)

One of the things I like best about this is that I use "$Id: Exp $" inside my files to keep a visual record of the latest change there. On update it edits the files and causes a pop up. I always felt uncomfortable chosing whether to keep/discard/diff it when all I saw was Cervisia.

For anyone who has not tried it, it is incredbly easy to set up a local CVS and have file versioning for your projects. Even working alone it provides substantial benefits and peace of mind.

by Apollo Creed (not verified)

Does anyone use and pay for Quanta Gold? It seems to me that theKompany, while a nice effort, is actually proving to the world why open source is better that closed source. ;) (I could definitely be wrong, though.)

by Mario (not verified)

Quanta Gold is by no means better than Quanta Plus, Quanta Plus, from my experience is actually significantly better and is more integrated with the KDE enviroment.

However, Quanta Gold has one big advantage (which could be seen as a disadvantage because it sacrifices integration in some areas) is that it can run on Windows and OS X in addition to Linux.

But, if you just run Linux there is little you will find in Quanta Gold which you will not find in Quanta Plus. And there will be quite a lot which you will find in Quanta Plus and not in Quanta Gold.

(Maybe things have changed, but this is how I feel since the last time I tried Quanta Gold)

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

> Quanta Gold is by no means better than Quanta Plus, Quanta Plus, from my experience is actually significantly better and is more integrated with the KDE enviroment.

Thank you.

> However, Quanta Gold has one big advantage (which could be seen as a disadvantage because it sacrifices integration in some areas) is that it can run on Windows and OS X in addition to Linux.

This is not entirely true. Quanta Plus runs on Mac OS X using the Fink project (http://fink.sourceforge.net/). As far as Windows goes you can also run KDE and Quanta+ there. See http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/. So the reality is that you can have it all and have it as F/OSS. Quanta Plus not only gives up nothing there but brings more fun to the party.

> But, if you just run Linux there is little you will find in Quanta Gold which you will not find in Quanta Plus. And there will be quite a lot which you will find in Quanta Plus and not in Quanta Gold.

There are I think a few features we don't have and more we have that they don't. A review a few months back of both found in our favor for productive use. Beyond that our development team is growing and the KDE re-use cannot be underestimated. By release 3.2 of quanta Plus I don't think there will be much doubt in a side by side comparison.

As always, in spite of our costs, the cost of Quanta Plus is whatever a user may feel compelled to freely contribute. ;-)

by sylvain mottet (not verified)

hello all of you,
I just wanted to give you a good reason to have at least a minimal wysiwyg in Quanta. In languages other than english, there are special symbols, accentuated characters and the like, that make a html source just as hard to read than to write. Plain text in french, for example, as it's my native language, is full of é è à and since it's still possible to write, that's much more convenient to be able to enter and modify text in your native language and let the software replace special characters with their correct code. And I think it would be specially useful for people for whom programming is not the first competence and have to maintain a web site.
Thanks a lot for your great piece of software.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

There is a lot more than just a basic application in the works. See http://members.shaw.ca/dkite/mar212003.html and scroll down a little to the discussion on what is to come.

by EUtopian (not verified)

You should be able to just specify character set in the document header and use these characters as normal. I do it all the time with characters such as å, ä and ö. As far as I remember this is completely legal, if and only if the character set is specified. (It often works anyway though, at least with ISO 8859-1).

by EUtopian (not verified)

Very interesting and fascinating interview.

I personally do not have a use for a web editor and don't have any Quanta experience, but I briefly launched it once and the interface seemed professional and well-structured. It is comforting that the people in charge are quite the visionaries and I believe that this application may go far.

As for the ideas about applications interacting, it sounds a lot to me like ARexx on the Amiga and Rexx on OS/2. They were very nice but somewhat under-appreciated. They did frequently make good glue to tie applications together and automate tasks, though.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

Rexx is nice because it is a very natural language non typed programming language that is quick and easy to grasp. Using a program like VX-Rexx you could create mini applications or quick dialogs or prototype programs. It was great for private or in house work. Unfortunately the company that produced it was sold and it fell by the way side.

Fundementally Kommander, scripting and DCOP are from similar conceptual roots but very much different in application, aside from being open and free unlike VX-Rexx. Rexx proved to be a great scripting language for instance in the Mesa 2 spreadsheet by sundial, the one application I really miss. The problem is that you needed to have a Rexx API in an application and then you needed to access it. Additionally you needed to know Rexx and you had to live with it's limitations like it's clunky tail strings instead of arrays. Object Rexx looked like a true winner but then there was no good visual tool one could depend on always being there to work with it. In fact non on OS/2 that I know of. Finally all of this lacked the abilities that would have come into play from DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) which OS/2 shared with win 3x. This was in my Opinion a far more useful tool that OLE (Which I believe menat One Large Expletive as your system collapsed when you used it).

Conversely using Kommander, shell or other scripting and DCOP actually does promote user accessiblity. You actually need actual programming to create an interactive dialog. You can choose between many competent languages to augment it. DCOP actually provides tools to make implementation very easy for developers. In fact most of the top applications have extensive DCOP integration for a variety of purposes. So the process of extention is already in place. So the next step here would be to promote specific DCOP uses, profile applications and create the ability to something more user friendly than kdcop to enable a filtered presentation of available calls for an app.

The central key here is to build on a visual tool that enables this without programming and can be further enhanced with shell scripting and/or the language of your choice. The idea is that your desktop becomes user extensible with custom dialogs, scripted interactions, data transparency and in effect merges into a seemless user application. So various aspects of tasks and projects become interactions of best of breed focused tools. That is really a very *nix way of looking at things anyway. ;-)