KDE-CVS-Digest for June 13, 2003
Saturday, 14 June 2003 | Dkite
In the latest issue of KDE-CVS-Digest, read about new Kontact plugins for summary, notes and the newsticker, KOffice gains improved import and export filters plus template loading from the command line, we also see an improvement in speed for Konqueror file and image viewing, and Dr Konqi gets hooked into KDevelop for debugging. Also, improvements to KDE Print, KGhostview, user interface cleanups, and numerous bug fixes.
Comments:
Thank you very much! - Michael Thaler - 2003-06-13
Derek, thank you very much for doing all the hard work every week and giving us this wonderful KDE-CVS Diggest. I love to read it!
Re: Thank you very much! - Jörgen S - 2003-06-14
Jeeez! These "Thanks Derek" posts are getting old.
Re: Thank you very much! - ac - 2003-06-14
Why? The KDE-CVS-Digests are very much appreciated. Why don't *you* stop being so negative? *That* is getting old. So, yes, back to the topic: Thanks for providing up to date news regularly every week. I don't think a *single* week has been missed since the launch of KDE-CVS-Digest. That is quite something.
Re: Thank you very much! - Derek Kite - 2003-06-14
To put a little perspective on things... I spend about 3 hours to generate the digest. Most commits to cvs probably take a couple of hours to find problem, fix, compile and test, maybe check with other developers, etc. Most don't get a mention in the digest. For example, Dirk and coolo regularly go through everything to make sure it compiles. Quite a few of the larger ones probably represent days of work. The whole thing could (and did) work well without me. But without the developers, we wouldn't have anything to talk about. The thanks are noted and appreciated. But please make sure you thank the ones doing the work. Derek
Re: Thank you very much! - Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh - 2006-03-14
Thank you very much! Thank you very much for doing all the hard work every week and giving us this wonderful KDE-CVS Diggest. I love to read it! its not a good way to say crazy so it means that you have not been underestood me yet then it's not my fualt
Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh, Canadian arranger assistant, - Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh - 2007-03-08
In 2003 my venture to seek higher education abroad brought me to the Kingdom of Thailand and ultimately to Shinawatra University. I received a full scholarship at Shinawatra International University for doing Bachelor of Communication Systems and Network Managements in Computer Science in 2004, such a scholarship which is rarely given to foreign students who are excellent to study in abroad. My keen interest to seek for international learning experiences and broaden my knowledge has always persuaded me to constantly look for opportunities. This is the primary reason why I have put this opportunity to do my internship in your company as one of my top priorities. This shows my strong commitment and eagerness to join this program. I strongly, believe that in a world that is constantly moving towards globalization, knowledge and experiences gained from certain one country is not sufficient. Not only International learning experiences helps me widen my academic knowledge, but it also strengthen me other aspects of societal knowledge which is equally important to qualify for a competent graduation. Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh Canadian arranger assistant, Vancouver, Canada.
Re: Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh, Canadian arranger assistant, - Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh - 2007-03-08
I am Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh a Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh, Canadian arranger assistant,Communication Systems and Network Managements. I am eager to exchange cultural activities as I enjoy learning new things from different cultures and social settings. Other than English, I am also proficient in several Asian and Middle East languages including Persian/Farsi, Thai, Arabic, Ordo. Before studying at Canadian Uuniversities, I studied my both Pre-University and Diploma in the filed of Mathematics and Physics in Rezvanshahr, Iran. I received an award of third rank among all Diploma Mathematics-Physics Students at Englab Eslami high school in 2000, and a second rank among all Pre-University Students at Pre-University Center, Gillan, Iran in 2000. Sohrab Navaee-Ardeh, Canadian arranger assistant, Vancouver, Canada
can unmount cdrom bug - maor - 2003-06-14
is anybody else have this bug with cvs . cant umount cdrom device after viewing in konqueror. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58504
Re: can unmount cdrom bug - Blue - 2003-06-14
Is this a dupe of 37780? I still have this problem with 3.1.2, and it's been around since before 3.0 was released.
Re: can unmount cdrom bug - maor - 2003-06-15
look like it's a dup of 58504 bug so i added my comment there.
Re: can unmount cdrom bug - Christopher Moniak - 2005-03-18
For some reason I can't unmount cdrom while using icons. I can do it from the command line. Any suggetions? Thanks. chris
Good change of focus - Alex - 2003-06-14
I'm very happy that KDE has decided to focus more on usability and general polish more now. This is one of the areas it lacks most at. Against XD2 using the latest stable GNOME no current KDE distribution can hold its own to it overall. XD2 looks amazing, the entire desktop is integrated and overall pretty polished. It's biggest drawback is proabbly that it doesen't give enough power to the user, for example I can not edit the menu easily, however KDE gives an excess of options, what needs to happen is a balance I really hope KDE developers all download XD 2 and try to implement what they like this desktop is far more inutiitive and a little faster than 3.1. it is also far better looking. For some screenshots and feature highlights check this out: http://ximian.com/products/desktop/features.html I have to say that I am very very pleased with XD2, it is the most usable and attractive desktop. This sums up most things I don't like about Konqueror in terms of apperance: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=3910 ANYWAY, PLEASE CHECK IT OUT! KDE DEVELOPERS NEED TO SEE THIS, THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS WE COULD USE IN KDE FROM THIS DESKTOP!
Re: Good change of focus - Alex - 2003-06-14
bug report for look and feel: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58944
Re: Good change of focus - enough - 2003-06-14
every time there have to be one talking about gnome this gnome that u like gnome use it if i would like to use desktop that look like xd2 i'll use xd2 but it's ugly usabillty is sucks and that's all. so stop be annoying u want xd2 use xd2. if u want to say somthing usefull say it don't talk about xd2 this xd2 that just say what u think.
Maybe you should listen - Alex - 2003-06-14
I'm not posting here just to say "EVERYTHING IS PERFECT IN KDE EVERY OTHER DE IS INFERIOR GO KDE AND THANKS!" like many people here , I actually want to post a realistic opinion on how things ar elooking on the other side and what I think needs to be improved. It is no help to post encouraging statements without any crititicism to the KDE developers, what is not working is a lot more important for them to know than what is working great. I think KDE in general is a better desktop for more advanced users, but XD2 is far more intuitive, like the way filters are added for their find tool or the way when one of the column headers in the list view is clicked that row is slightly darker to show which column was selected and many other things. KDE I believe also has a better base to work from, and better toolkit. It also includes many more feautres, though many times hard to use or just plain needless. It is the opposite for GNOME, sometimes there are not enough features. For example, I switched my mom to XD2 and SuSE 8.2, because she loved the way it looked and felt. I had thousands of e-mails, documents, pictures etc. all copied to her home directory. Unfortunately because Windows runs as root everything was read only for her (indicated by a nice emblem for the files, gotta love thsoe emblems http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37300 ;)) and when i change dthe permission of the backup folder the files inside it still remained with the same permissions. I almost ran her as root by default before I decided to try Konqueror to see waht it will do. Thankfully Konqueror did not omitt this essential feature and after I changed the permission fo the folder and cecke da box saying something like change permissions of all files and folders inside too everything was great =) You see, I like KDE a lot, and I want it to succeed mor ethan any other DE, because KDE developers seem to care about the architecture and not just features, this is exactly why I have submitted over a dozen bug reports and none for GNOME. I use KDE, but I am an experienced user, someone like my mom likes GNOME more than KDE because it is more inutuitive and this is what needs to be improved. I do not want KDE developer to strip the desktop bare, just improve its current features and their usability. For example the background program displaying a website for the background in KDE is totally unpolished and is very poor. Its gui is bad, and all it does is take a screenshot of the website rendered in konqueror, it does not even bother to remove the scrollbars which can not be used. This level of quality should not be in KDE. I hope you understand.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Debian User - 2003-06-14
Hi, few people care about Gnome here. Why should they at all? Obviously Gnome developers don't share KDE goals, otherwise they would develop KDE probably. The same holds true otherwise. The goal of KDE is to empower the user. The goal of Gnome is probably to make money of your mom, force everybody to do it the same way, or whatever. Just look at the button order. OK/Cancle vs Cancle/Ok. Sure the HIG is a nice thing, but I personally prefer configurable code that allows my HIG to appy. I am personally very happy that everything in KDE is improving all the time. Gnome was close to dying around Gnome2.0, is it better now anyway, is it actively developed outside secrecy maintaining Ximian? Little to no impact on improving KDE can come from Gnome as Gnome is not or not openly developed as KDE. Yours, Kay PS: And has to be mentioned, the usage of CAPS is not appreciated either and never has been the indication of person capable or willing to help.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Maynard - 2003-06-14
Flaming GNOME does not make it any less good than it is. HIG is meant to be followed by everyone, including developers who may think otherwise. The GNOME HIG was developed in consultation with their developers, and because so many are actually using it, GNOME apps actually look very consistent. Consistency is IMO most desirable. Once people get used to OK/Cancel, as long as all apps they use do that, they will not use it. GNOME also makes good use of color in the dialogs, which helps users correctly identify the choices being offered. GNOME does not force anyone to use their button order. If you do not follow the HIG, then your app is not included in the base GNOME. Thats all. The fact that so many not even targetting inclusion in GNOME actually do use the HIG speaks volumes about how good the HIG must be though. KDE needs something like that. GNOME is openly developed, only that companies contribute a lot. They also spend money on it for user testing. Three companies, Redhat, Sun, and Ximian contributed to the making of that HIG. KDE needs more of that. It is easier for volunteers to code than it is for them to do thorough user testing or even give some of their money which is where companies come in because they do have a financial interest in keeping the project going. And you are wrong that nothing from GNOME can improve KDE and vice versa. Only last week, Nat Friedman said something about the clock configuration dialog, and it was promptly fixed because it was really bad. That was an idea from a GNOME person, albeit read from an interview. Plus with Freedesktop.org, both sides need to agree on ways of sharing information between them. You must get it out of your head that having companies come and give direction to the project is tantamount to taking it away. They cannot take it away. KDE will stagnate if it does not get its share of that money being used to develop opensource products.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Aaron J. Seigo - 2003-06-14
while i agree with some of the things you've said, i'd like to nip in the bud two new fallicies that are starting to emerge as KDE urban legends. first, the idea that Nat Friedman's comment caused the clock config to be rewritten is bogus. i had started on this weeks ago and had been puttering away on it here and there with no real "Must be done in the next 2 hours" urgency because 3.2 is a long ways off and i'm working on quite a few different things for 3.2 (as are many KDE developers). had Nat not said a thing, that dialog still would've been rewritten in 3.2. in fact, because he said something and a few people jumped on it immediately it caused duplication of effort. yes, outside critique and viewpoint is good, but in this case it made no real difference for 3.2. i wish people would stop purporting that it did. second, the idea that without mo' money KDE will stagnate is bogus as well. there are so many things wrong with this one i don't know where to begin. first off, there are KDE developers who are payed to work on KDE. more people are finding ways to support themselves doing KDE work, and this trend is only increasing. second, KDE got to where it is today without all those "oh so necessary dollars". and i hope you'll agree with me that where KDE is today isn't so bad, and that it isn't stagnating. third, the first time i heard this argument it came from no other than Miguel De Icaza himself. as you know he's rather pro-GNOME, and GNOME's biggest accomplishment to date is that they have managed to get lots of dollars in the door for development. i applaud them for that. but one may notice that whenever Miguel perceives GNOME as having done something good, he tends to turn around and say that KDE is doing that same thing poorly and that's why it will fail and die. whatever. next week he'll discover 7-11 "nachos" and decide GNOME will succeed because it's processed-cheese friendly while KDE seems to prefer real cheese and will therefore cease to exist in the near future. and just to make myself clear: i agree that more corporate involvement (and more volunteer involvement too!) can benefit KDE and all of it's users greatly... KDE is quite corporation friendly as has been seen in the efforts of Mandrake, SuSe, Trolltech, KDAB and others. there is a foundation set for those who would like to support KDE with effort and funding, and this will only strengthen in the weeks and months to come.
Odd - Alex - 2003-06-14
Yes, GNOME has gotten a lot more corporate attention than KDE from a lot of companies and it has seen a great increase in quality and especially acessibility and usability. KDE on the other side has had little corporate support from big companies like SUN and it does not enjoy being shipped as the default DE in the biggest linux distro in the world with over half of the entire linux installed base. However, even with all that money thrown at GNOME, it is still questionable if they are truly ahead overall. What has made them so much more commercially adopted is probably that their license is LGPL and that companies don't need to pay anyone if they want to make a commercial product using say GTK. Therefore, at least the initial costs are FAR FAR lower and this gives GNOME an enormous advantage to the corporate, especially in times when money is tight. KDE, can not compete with GNOME on the initial cost, but we can compete in making the total cost lower for KDE by having a much better architecture, toolkit, DOCUMENTATION (really needs work) and support from the community. Ther also need to maybe be some benefits for companies suporting KDE, like a prority support list or something?!
Yes, odd indeed. - Datschge - 2003-06-14
How comes you think that Gnome is "much more commercially adopted"? I only see Red Hat using Gnome as (heavily tweaked) default, all other commercial distributions use KDE as default. And I see more commercial programs making use of QT than of GTK. And why does it matter for you what companies have to pay? Companies supporting KDE benefit from a free well thought out and well working technical backend with a very flexible frontend (eg. Kiosk mode). Improvements are easy to include on a system level and will benefit all programs due to the existing strict code sharing infrastructure within KDE.
Re: Yes, odd indeed. - Maynard - 2003-06-15
Lets see. The big distros are Redhat and SuSe right now. Then there is Lindows, Lycoris, Mandrake and Xandros. I put Mandrake together with tose because I see no way for it to go but down right now. Suse is big in Germany and Europe. Redhat is the Linux company with the largest market cap, and the largest share in th corporate world by far. Even compared with Suse. If anyone is making an app to run on Linux, if they provide rpms, then they provide Redhat ones. Then in some cases they provide with Suse and Mandrake ones. Then yu have SUN, Ximian and Redhat basically sponsoring the writing of the HIG. Sun ships Solaris with GNOME. Making a few tools in KDE does not count as major support IMHO. If you look at true contributions, GNOME has way better contribution than KDE. (Home)Desktop is not the most viable market right now. Enterprise desktop maybe, and guess who dominates there. Look at Ximian. They will only provide packages for Redhat 7.3, 8.0 and 9 vs only SuSE 8.2 and none for anyone else. Should give you very good leads as to who is major in the market right, at least of those Ximian is targetting. Maybe let me give you a short list of Major contributions to GNOME 1. The HIG - Sun, Redhat and Ximian 2. Evolution and Red-carpet - Ximian 3. Bitstream Vera- The now default font set in GNOME - Bitstream (Yes KDE can use them) 4. Nautilus - I know Eazel went out of business 5. GNOME Setup Tools - formerly Ximian Setup Tools 6. Eclipse - Well not really, but there is a very mature port to GTK - IBM 7. HP was also going GNOME, but they have backtracked for now. Just know that Distributions do not really count unless they are as big as Redhat. The rest pretty much deal with very small niches and are going nowhere certain right now.
Re: Yes, odd indeed. - Datschge - 2003-06-15
I really don't see what you want to say or achieve. I don't and KDE as a project shouldn't care whether Red Hat hast the "largest share in the corporate world" (in the US?). I also don't care whether Red Hat forces others to provide RPMs while SuSE often gladly offers them themselves if there's demand. I don't care if any company contributed a HIG to Gnome, it was Gnome lacking one while KDE already has it [1] for years. Also I don't understand your definition of "true contribution", I just hope you don't consider your post as one. ;) As for enterprise desktops, Microsoft dominates by far there, Ximian struggles for some time to open the market for alternatives, Xandros offered a more complete solution for former Windows users for some time already and SuSE just extended its offerings with a new "linux desktop for enterprise" member due to "huge demand". Again nothing which should bother KDE as a community. 1. See http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/basics/ and http://developer.kde.org/documentation/design/ui/ 2a. See Kroupware/Kolab/Kontact project which can replace whole Exchange/Outlook networks. 2b. Offering an updating system for a system is a job which should be done by distributions. Red Carpet regularily breaks stuff unless used solely which makes it basically an own distribution with all its pros and cons. Nothing KDE should offer imo (besides the already existing KPackage). 3. Bitstream Vera is pretty much useless as of now since it lacks many unicode ranges. 4. Konqueror versus Nautilus, which cost more money, which has more features, which looks better, which is faster? I'd honestly pay more for Konqueror and hope someone adds the few eye candy Nautilus offers later on instead taking Nautilus and hoping for missing features to be added. But I digress, KDE as a project should never take part in silly battles like this. 5. GST formerly XST is basing on a flexible Perl backend for changing system values, there are already several people planning to create a KDE frontend (currently dubbed kggst, kde gui for gnome setup tools) for it in Nove Hrady. 6. There's KDevelop and even Kylix if you count QT.
Re: Yes, odd indeed. - Maynard - 2003-06-15
I think you miss the point of my post. I was not trying to say that these are better than KDE alternatives at all. Just to say that there is more corporate involvement in GNOME than KDE. The only on your list that is corporate is the Kroupware/Kolab/Kontact project. And IMO ; - 1. That style basics does not qualify as an HIG. Read GNOME's and Apple's to get the gist of what I am talking about. An HIG is <desperately> needed. 2. Broken dependencies with red-carpet are not the result of red-carpet, but rather the packages in the channel. The problem is with Linux packaging more than it is about red-carpet. 3. Bitstream Vera is useful if you do not have to deal with the missing Unicode ranges. It is made to look good on the desktop. Most people use it with no problems. It was never said to be complete. 4. Yes Konqueror has more features than Nautilus, and it is a matter of opinion about the looks. I think Nautilus looks very good, better than Konqi. But to each his own. The point is that it was donated by a company to GNOME. 5. The point again is this was donated to GNOME by a company. That KDE wants to make a front end for it is not the issue. 6. Yes there is Kdevelop, but you are still missing the point.
Re: Yes, odd indeed. - lit - 2003-06-15
> 1. That style basics does not qualify as an HIG. Read GNOME's and Apple's to get the gist of what I am talking about. An HIG is <desperately> needed. Sure, go make one for us :) *grin* Anyway, GNOME needed a HIG more than KDE back with GNOME 1.4. It still needs a HIG more than KDE needs one. By using classes that found in kdelibs, KDE application developers can assure (1) that they follow good HIG standards that more than ~70% of the GNOME HIG talks about. This is the nice architectural nature of KDE. Note that some classes needs to follow good HIG standards in the first place. If we wanted to switch to no lines in Group Boxes, like GNOME for example, we could always create a KGroupBox class which calls setLineWidth(0) in it's ctor, and globally s/QGroupBox/KGroupBox through kde. What KDE really needs isn't a massive application-writing HIG like GNOME. It needs a hig for kdelibs itself, and a small section for general application writing. 1) -- Using classes and services like KDialogBase, KStdAction, KKeyChooser, KNotify, KIntSpinBox, etc..
Re: Yes, odd indeed. - Debian User - 2003-06-16
Hi, Which was exactly my point. And with KDE the HIG in code can be modified through personal configuration. Not to say that HIG in code saves code duplication, allows higher flexibility should changes be needed and still allows people to cut down. Seen KDE Kiosk operation. Yours, Kay
Re: Yes, odd indeed. - Datschge - 2003-06-15
Ok, so your only point is that you want stuff to be contributed by a company?
Re: Yes, odd indeed. - Ruediger Knoerig - 2003-06-15
I've had a lot of talks with SuSE guys in the last time and they've stated that SuSE sees KDE as the the superior desktop. And SuSE does a lot for the KDE (see their homepage).
Re: Odd - fault - 2003-06-14
How is GNOME that much more commercially supported than KDE? I don't exactly see a huge amount of companies developing for GNOME compared to KDE. The only two large(r) companies that I can think of that have greatly supported GNOME development are Sun, RedHat, Ximian, and Eazel. On the other hand, SuSE, Mandrake, and Corel have greatly helped KDE development over the years. KDE has also enjoyed being shipped as the default desktop environment in almost all commercially available distros, except for Redhat. This has cancelled out the RedHat+default GNOME factor. Like it or not, RedHat will continue to dislike KDE-- they have been 1997 :) > DOCUMENTATION (really needs work) and support from the community. Yes, I do think documentation needs work. However, it's not so great in GNOME either, especially developer's documentation. > Therefore, at least the initial costs are FAR FAR lower and this gives GNOME an enormous advantage to the corporate, especially in times when money is tight. Sure, but I haven't exactly seen a large corporate rush to GNOME (or KDE)... You might find this shocking, but KDE and GNOME only have to be marginally better in terms of usability in the future to be adopted widely. The major problem thus far for mass deployement of KDE and GNOME isn't the desktops themselves, but the supported software and base operating system it runs on (like Linux..) When there is an easy way to configure the system (yes, system, not desktop), not mess with config files, install hardware instantly, migrate from Windows quickly, etc.., you'll see more migration to Linux/(KDE or GNOME) from Windows. Many of these things fall outside of the realm of a desktop in the X11 (that is, KDE or GNOME) sense. And many of these things are already being worked by distro makers.
its true - Alex - 2003-06-14
Redhat is perhaps the only major distro using GNOME as the default, but their market share is larger than all of the KDE distributions put together! In addition, msot companies that decided to develop for Linux have used GNOME/GTK and not KDE/Qt, for example Lost Marble's excellent animation program, Loki's tools, Ximian's programs, I'm not sure but I think WineX too, and Mozilla's only got a GTK frontend that is actually maintained, Eclipse only has a GTK front end, even Mandrake uses GTK to develop their tools and so on.. all these companies mad ethis decision only because it was cheaper to use GNOME/GTK and so we need to show them it is not if you consider the total cost for lets say 5 years, or anyway the architecture needs to be vastly superior. It IMo is better if KDE gets a company than if GNOME get sone to develop using their tools because the comapny has to pay trolltech a fee if developing clsoed source and so trolltech will thrive as KDE gains more momentum and KDE will get a better and ebtter architecture and support from trolltech and Qt will also improve faster IMo. Anyway, the license sounds fair, if you want to make a profit and you close the source you pay, if you don't want to make a profit or you GPL the program you don't pay trolltech.
Re: its true - Datschge - 2003-06-15
You are living in the US, don't you? SuSE is the largest distribution in Germany, I'm pretty sure Conectiva is the biggest in Brazil, TurboLinux in Japan, Red Flag in China etc. Just because Red Hat seems to be the only local distribution you can buy at your place (after Caldera went to hell with SCO) you don't need to conclude it rules the world. That being said I think the discussion is pretty much useless. If someone starts a business he does so because he has a business idea, something the market asks for and he can earn money with. Many companies already do earn money with FOSS and use a desktop, if necessary, mostly based on KDE. Gnome never had such a broad widespread audience but always has been limited to few companies like Red Hat, Eazel, Ximian, Sun and HP (all US companies) which basically took over the project controlwise. With KDE way more companies are already directly and indirectly involved so I doubt a KDE counterpart to Ximian is actually that feasible businesswise. But that's up to the market's demand, not up to us as community imo.
Re: its true - lit - 2003-06-15
>Redhat is perhaps the only major distro using GNOME as the default, but their market share is larger than all of the KDE distributions put together. I've seen reports that this is true, and I've seen reports that Mandrake has more users than RH. I have no idea who to beleive, personally. Anyway, in almost every report that I've seen, KDE usage has ALWAYS been higher than GNOME's, usually by a considerable number. I think this is mostly because of stagnation in gnome developmeent from 2000 to early 2002. Very little happened then. > In addition, msot companies that decided to develop for Linux have used GNOME/GTK and not KDE/Qt Many of those instances are because the usage of GTK guarenteed smaller statically-made apps. Trust me, I worked for Loki in early 2001 :-) We actually did have several copies of the commercial version of Qt, and I suppose we could have used it. But we wanted to keep our installer ultra-small. I didn't have access to the copy of commercial Qt while I was there though :( Anyway, I'm pretty sure the decision by other companies, like Mandrake, is similiar. I wouldn't doubt that Mandrake already had enough copies of the commercial Qt to make what they needed. I beleive Mandrake open-sourced their tools anyways so they could have used GPL-Qt. There are plenty of commercial vendors using Qt in making apps for Linux too. Good examples of this are Borland and Opera Software. There have been plenty of people who wanted to port Eclipse to Qt, but at that time, there were some licensing problems with kdejava/qtjava, and the creator of it had at that time disappeared (Richard Dale)
Re: its true - Anonymous - 2003-06-15
> Mozilla's only got a GTK frontend that is actually maintained, Eclipse only has a GTK front end, even Mandrake uses GTK to develop their tools and so on... all these companies made this decision only because it was cheaper to use GNOME/GTK All these are under GPL afaik so the commercial Qt cost argument didn't exist for these! In Mandrake's case it may have been chosen because of the original author's preference/experience. In the other cases becauses there was a need to make a GTK frontend (or in case of OpenOffice.org a GTK-look-alike version) because no mature native Gnome/GTK version for these program type existed for Gnome.
Re: its true - Debian User - 2003-06-16
Hello, isn't Redhat using Bluecurve to migrate away from Gnome to KDE? doesn't that coincide with Redhat on the Desktop? wasn't KDE the sole reason of existance for Mandrake (a fork of the Redhat that didn't include the then legally unclear KDE) ? and governments here in Europe change the desktop, which desktop is the only one mentioned ever? Yes, KDE. Because it can come closer to Windows HIG while still appealing those that like other HIGs. Yours, Kay
Re: Odd - Anonymous - 2003-06-15
> as the default DE in the biggest linux distro in the world with over half of the entire linux installed base. RedHat? Tell me the source for those figures. Debian, Mandrake and SuSE are far more popular than you perhaps believe. > What has made them so much more commercially adopted is probably that their license is LGPL and that companies don't need to pay anyone if they want to make a commercial product using say GTK. Tell me commercial/closed products which have chosen LGPGL because of this. Why do RealPlayer and Acrobat Reader Linux versions still look ugly and are not ported to GTK if this is such a natural thing? Why did Adobe even chose and pay for Qt for the Windows version of Photoshop Album?
Re: Odd - Maynard - 2003-06-15
Debian is mostly e geek distro. No major deployments there. Mandrake is mostly a user distro. Redhat is not too far behind Mandrake on the enthusiast desktop. In fact, the Redhat crowd seems to be growing of late. Suse is not even as popular as Redhat on the desktop. Redhat leaves them for the dust in the enterprise. Its trusted and already has one of the more recognized qualifications(certifications) in the industry. Internet polls are very skewed when it comes to comparing the popularity of these distros which is where a lot of people get their stats from.
Re: Odd - Anonymous - 2003-06-15
> Debian is mostly e geek distro. No major deployments there. Eh? Debian is for sure the second most used distro for servers. > Mandrake is mostly a user distro. Users don't count to use the over-all Linux installation statistic? > Suse is not even as popular as Redhat on the desktop. Source? RedHat afaik doesn't even have desktop targetted products yet. > Internet polls are very skewed when it comes to comparing the popularity of these distros which is where a lot of people get their stats from. So where do you get the figures from for your opinion?
Re: Maybe you should listen - Maynard - 2003-06-14
I was stating my opinions and I do not believe I am wrong. OK, maybe stagnate is a wrong word, but once KDE becomes very large, it could need a better organisational structure which is more corporation friendly. Right now users rule what goes on there, but once interest goes past enthusiasts, then there will need to be greater representation for the non enthusiast users, which is most likely to be companies serving their clients. Right now, I believe signals in the open source world are terribly misleading. Many popular open source projects are popular because of their enthusiast bias. This is why you go to many mailing lists and you hear people extolling the virtues of Windowmake, Fluxbox, Enlightenment over even KDE and GNOME. You and I know they are both wrong, and there is no way they can be better than a proper full fledged desktop. The software needs to move past the enthusiast stage to a stage where actual users for whom software would be grudge purchase in a way demand certain features. These people are not on mailing lists and do not frequent the dot. Neither do they know or care to know what KDE is. The community does not have the best access to these groups, but companies do, since they sell products to them and their involvement probably will shift the aims of the project to incorporate them more. This is partly what happened to the GNOME project. This is where the community wil probably feel they are losing control of the project and start complaining. And many may leave like many quit GNOME. Many people do not enjoy computing like I imagine everyone who comes to the dot does and therefore their preferences are very different to our preferences. You just have to look at the BSDs to see how far the community takes you and in which direction. The BSDs are technically 'better' than Linux, especially with regards security, but miss a lot of features which we now take for granted in Linux. So while development would not 'stagnate' as such, just try to think for example, where the Linux kernel would be without the the involvement of companies like Transmeta, Redhat, IBM and so on. Not as far as it is now certainly. So no, where KDE is is not bad at all. On the contrary, it is impressive. But it needs the steadiness a few more paid maintainers and programmers can give to it the future. And I do remember Miguel admitting that GNOME had fallen behind on some aspects. The point is don't listen to Miguel, he is selling GNOME, so expect what ever he says to be a bit of a sales pitch. Listen instead to nuetral analysts. My point with the whole Nat thing was that he noticed something was wrong with something in KDE, and he pointed it out. That it was being fixed was not what I was important there. The point is some people actually reacted to what he said (A good thing) and is part of how the two projects can help each other. It did create as you said, duplication of effort, but the fact is some people reacted to it.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Datschge - 2003-06-14
KDE is already very large: The amount of official KDE source code is nearly equal that of the Linux kernel. KDE is very corporation friendly: Companies can easily contribute improvements to KDE, as long as they actually improve instead break stuff they are very much welcomed from everyone. And all KDE users as well as all companies using KDE benefit of that. Only if a company doesn't want to give back its products basing on QT to the community which gave it the environment they'll have to pay Trolltech for being able to keep the source closed. KDE doesn't need companies working on KDE to survive: KDE has a large community contributing to KDE. Due to the technical quality of KDE more and more long time KDE developers who know what they are doing are paid by companies to work full time on KDE. Moreover the basic framework is undisputed and allows any kind of contributors with or without commercial interests to extend KDE. A good example for a specific commercial interest leading to valuable contributions is the Kroupware/Kolab/Kontact project which can replace whole Exchange/Outlook networks and will be included in KDE 3.2. KDE is easy to support as soon as you know how to: KDE offers many different ways how one can make valuable contributions. Discussions about generic issues are usually a waste of time for anyone involved since KDE as a large project archieved a level of flexibility where noone is still willing to restrict it again anymore. Nobody denies however that there are many small pieces in KDE which are in need of improvements, and those are only improved when one actually picks them up and improves them. Please pick yours at http://datschge.gmxhome.de/support.html
Re: Maybe you should listen - Anonymous - 2003-06-15
Nearly equal? Last count gave 2.6 million lines of code for KDE and 3.1 million lines of code for Linux 2.5.29.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Philipp - 2003-06-15
How would you define nearly equal if it wouldn't fit for 2.6 and 3.1. Both are around 3 Mio lines of code, so how would you call it? Philipp
Re: Maybe you should listen - Anonymous - 2003-06-15
500000 lines are no gap for you? That's nothing to catch up in a month or so.
Re: Maybe you should listen - jeb - 2003-06-15
I was curious about some exact numbers, so I ran cxxmetric plus some bash and python scripting automagic to scan the source files.. Here's what I got: Linux 2.4.20 1,995,143 Linux 2.5.68-mm1 3,329,570 kdecvs (arts+kdebase+kdelibs+koffice+kdevelop+kdeaddons+kdegames+kdenetwork+kdeartwork+kdepim+quanta) 76075+579346+504765+663920+43862+196307+93308+101963+32109+205122+87717 = 2496777 (yes, I'm missing a few like kdeutils, kdeadmin, kdeedu, kdegraphics, kdemultimedia, kdeaccessibility, kdesdk.. I would expect around ~600,000 more LOC from those combined) kdenonbeta 649,458 Mozilla 1.3: 2,406,372 Xfree86 4.3.0: 2,129,444 Wine 4/11/03 701,312 gcc 3.2.2 1,026,056 qt 3.2b 694,368 gtk 1.2.10+glib 1.2.10 137,145+1,8546=155,691 gtk 2.2.1+glib 2.2.1+pango 1.2.1 31,5406+81,000+43,247=439,653
Re: Maybe you should listen - Derek Kite - 2003-06-15
It may be that there is a different way of doing things. The corporate top down development model is familiar, but isn't the only way. In fact, corporate involvement in the FOSS movement, linux, gnome, apache, etc. came because a strong base of enthusiasts built a system that was better, more flexible, cheaper, freer, more stable than the alternatives. So now we stop doing what brought us this far? The desktop is getting very close to where it needs to be. It is progressing amazingly fast. This without huge 'corporate' support and involvement. I would hate to see any reorganisation that would alienate the enthusiasts. For the simple reason that the enthusiasts are the ones who are doing all the work. They own the project. They are the programmers, translators, testers, etc. Derek
Re: Maybe you should listen - Eric Laffoon - 2003-06-15
> I was stating my opinions and I do not believe I am wrong. OK, maybe stagnate is a wrong word, but once KDE becomes very large, it could need a better organisational structure which is more corporation friendly. I'm sorry. You're just plain wrong here. It is a fallacy that I have to guess is based on the fact that you are making this observation from the outside. Here's some free advice. Don't buy the popcorn. KDE is the best example of bazzaar prgramming I know of and it works. Not only that but I will take our program, Quanta, and issue this challenge. Show me any web development tool that a developer has used seriously where that developer has also used Quanta seriously. Now, if they had issues with both ask them where they had better service. We are extremely friendly to compaines. If anything they have yet to warm up to us and "get it", that they can get the software for less on a community development model. There's nothing wrong with this because it's a new paradigm that will take time. Here's a thought for you... Just because people do not yet fully understand a better, more productive and less costly paradigm does not mean that we need to rush our and adopt one that is gradually eroding to the up and coming paradigm we have. That's just wrong! > Right now users rule what goes on there, but once interest goes past enthusiasts, then there will need to be greater representation for the non enthusiast users, which is most likely to be companies serving their clients. Please don't be offended... but this simply illustrates you are pretty much unaware of how things work. I don't know if an in depth explanation is appropriate in a talkback. Again, I'm not trying to offend you but... Users don't choose! Maintainers, developers and release coordinators choose. It's done based on open discussion, with common sense, and with regard for users as much as possible. Because KDE developers are sincerely concerned about all users the reference to enthusiasts is only relevent in as much as they are also supported instead of a seemingly single focus on newbies. As far as corporate users go there is only one thing that needs to be said... Kiosk! KDE can be reshaped, thinned down, locked down and completely controlled. If you look into kiosk mode you will understand there is absolutely nothing that compares to KDE for corporate support! > Right now, I believe signals in the open source world are terribly misleading. Many popular open source projects are popular because of their enthusiast bias. Whatever merit this statement has must be contextural. I'll take Quanta for instance. Our mailing list doesn't go a lot into extolling the virtues of our program. It is open discussion and help. But Quanta's strength is in enthusiasts. They are enthusiastic because they like how it works, saves them time and gets the job done. Any given piece of software is going to draw a large portion of it's support, especially vocal support, from enthusiasts. I can't see that changing. If you can't get enthusiastic about new software you will probably stay with the old software. Right? > The community does not have the best access to these groups, but companies do, since they sell products to them and their involvement probably will shift the aims of the project to incorporate them more. There you go... several classic fallacies which indicate to me you probably dion't run a business or manage an OSS project. From the OSS perspective developers have direct access to users without filtering by corporate offices, shaping by marketing and constraints by accounting. Companies regularly promote useless fluff, vapor and half baked code for internal reasons and because the believe they can promote it. From a marketing psrspective companies try to know their customers... but you and I know our friends better. This is why 1 in 4 people in the US was in an MLM in the early 90s and it was doing billions of dollars in business. That's why the internet has done so well. Companies can be less faceless and more personal. Knowing the customer is not actually something companies do well without spending millions of dollars to find out what you and I talk about on a mailing list or over a beer. More over it's the selling of products that becomes the issue. I personally love to sell, but I sell a product I have absolute control over the quality of. The fact is once companies get involved they have to think about deadlines and bottom lines. This translates into software hacks, bugs and botched feature sets. Believe me when I tell you that outside of open source, unless you're an IBM fellow with free reign, it's not easy to do it right. KDE is good because it's done right. > So no, where KDE is is not bad at all. On the contrary, it is impressive. But it needs the steadiness a few more paid maintainers and programmers can give to it the future. I sort of agree with you here, but I wouldn't say "needs". I would say they would greatly benefit from this, but as you pointed out, not with a massive corporate oversight. For my part I'm actually looking to involve more users contributing so that I can increase the number of developers I sponsor. I have one so far and hope to add a part time developer next month. The difficult thing is to remember what my dad always told me thought did... nothing... that is, nothing without action. Years from now the talk won't mean anything but the actions that were taken could well end up in the history books. ;-)
Re: Maybe you should listen - Nadeem Hasan - 2003-06-18
Developers like me are spending their time and money both on KDE. KDE is self sustaining.
Re: Maybe you should listen - lit - 2003-06-15
> GNOME actually do use the HIG speaks volumes about how good the HIG must be though. KDE needs something like that. Much of KDE already complies with a lot of the GNOME hig. Some differences between KDE-cvs and the GNOME-HIG are listed below (widely known things like ok/cancel button order and quit vs. exit are not listed).. this might look like a big list, but considering the size of the GNOME-hig, it really is not. KDE is already more compatable with the GNOME-hig than GNOME 1.4 ever was. 1. GNOME hig recommends using tooltips in menus, especially things like the footmenu. The k-menu does not have menu tooltips, and I don't think any apps do. 2. The GNOME HIG recommends most configuration dialogs to be "instant apply". I'm not sure why the HIG decided to do this however. I didn't state any usability reasons why this is superior to KDE/Windows "explicit apply" behavior. In fact, I think it would be confusing to end users as some dialog, and even some dialog options would have to be inherently explicit apply (the HIG tells what options should be explicit apply) 3. The GNOME HIG says that alerts must usually have primary and secondary text. KDE alerts don't do this. I like how the GNOME hig recommends doing Quit/Save Confirm alerts. A typical HIG-ified dialog would say "Save changes to document 'foo' before closing?" and then "If you close without saving, changes from the past FOO minutes will be discarded." KDE Save/Confirm dialogs, on the other hand, say "The Document 'foo has been changed'", and then "Do you want to save it?". KDE's is similiar to Windows behavior. 4. the GNOME hig says that authentication dialogs should "will present a button labelled with a verb or verb phrase describing the action authenticated, or OK if such a phrase would be longer than three words. Place this button in the bottom right corner of the alert."... For example, "Check Mail" if logging into a mail server. KDE authentication dialogs don't do this. 5. All window captions in KDE have the app name in them, like "Document - AppName". GNOME hig recommends that appnames don't appear in the window caption. It does say that if you really want to have it in the caption, it should be after the document name. KDE has followed that for years. 6. GNOME hig generally recommends that dialog box captions have full text of action performed. For example, Print "kde.dot.news". In KDE, it would be "Print - Konqueror" 7. The GNOME HIG says to put initial keyboard focus to the component that user is expected to operate first. KDE apps "generally" follow this. But I think an audit of all KDE apps would be nice for anyone looking for something to do in usability. I think nearly all of them are fine though. 8. The GNOME HIG recommends that wizards/assistants don't have help button but rather inline help. It also says that the introductory page shouldn't have a back button and only should have "big picture text". kpersonalizer doesn't follow this. 9. The GNOME HIG recommends that ALL menu items have accel keys. Most of them do in KDE apps, but not all. Note that this is offset somewhat in KDE, because KDE supports searching in menus by typing in letters. 10. The GNOME HIG recommends avoiding more than one level of submenus. This is generally followed by apps in KDE, but not the kmenu. 11. The GNOME HIG recommends that in western locales, buttons acting on contents of whole window should be at bottom. Most KDE apps follow this- some don't (thinking about things like kfloppy and kfind) 12. The GNOME HIG recommends putting a menubar in each primary application window. Again, most KDE apps do this. Some smaller apps like kfloppy, kfind, etc.. don't. 13. The GNOME HIG recommends not putting mechanism for hiding the menubar, as this may be activated accidentally, resulting in the application being "broken" for some users. But if it's absolutely needed, put some other way that it can be accessed again, like in toolbar. Konsole/Konq do provide another way-- through a context menu. However, the HIG says "Be aware that popup menus are used primarily by intermediate and advanced users. Even some users who have used graphical desktops for many years do not know about popup menus until somebody shows them." Perhaps another method of showing the menubar would be good. 14. The GNOME HIG says to limit top-level menus to a maximum of about 15 items. Most KDE apps do this. Some koffice apps don't. 15. The GNOME HIG says to provide an access key for each item in an popupmenu. However, to enhance their spatial efficency and readability, it says not to show keyboard shortcuts in popup menus. All KDE apps show keyboard shortcuts in popupmenus. I agree with the The GNOME HIG here. 16. The GNOME HIG orders popup menus as default action for object, other commands and settings in expected frequency-of-use order, then transfer commands such as copy, paste, etc, and finally input methods. KDE apps don't follow this. In konqueror-cvs, it goes, default action for <some objects>, transfer commands, then command and settings, and doesn't show input methods in text edits at all. 17. The GNOME HIG says not to place more than about ten items on a popup menu, and not to use submenus. Some kde apps like Konqueror don't follow this. I disagree with the submenus though. Sometimes it helps organization. There are still extraneous things in Konq-cvs's popup menu like "undo". The GNOME HIG says that popup menus should act on the selected object, so thus, undo should only appear when clicked on content area, not on icons. 18. The GNOME HIG says that the best size for a group of menu items seperated by a seperator is around 2-5 items. It says also that single-item groups are best placed at the top or bottom of a menu. Some KDE apps don't follow this very well. For example, kwrite's tools menu or konq-cvs's edit and help menus. 19. The GNOME HIG says to label the menu item with a trailing ellipsis ("...") only if the command requires further input from the user before it can be performed. Do not add an ellipsis to items that only present a confirmation dialog (such as Delete), or that do not require further input (such as Properties, Preferences or About). KDE apps don't follow this. 20. The GNOME HIG recommends to use the "File" menu name with all apps that operate on documents. It's debatable wether KDE apps follow this like Konqueror :) Also, it recommends sorting this menu by locality. For example, items to save or load from file, followed by printing, followed by sending to a remote user/host. Some KDE apps such as Konq don't follow this order. Also, KDE apps tend to put things like "Properties" in the View menu instead of the File menu, as is recommended by the The GNOME HIG. 21. In the edit menu, the GNOME HIG recommends putting "Undo" and "Redo" even if app only supports one level of Undo. Also, HIG says to put "Preferences" here. KDE apps typically have another menu to do this. I agree with the HIG here. 22. The GNOME HIG recommends that by default, have toolbars appear directly below the main menu bar. Konsole doesn't follow this. 23. The GNOME HIG says to provide an option to return all toolbars in your application to the default. The KDE dialog for this doesn't. This is important because in apps like Konq, you can remove things like <merge> and not have a way of getting it back-- or mess up the toolbar somehow (I've done it in Konq) 24. The GNOME HIG says to not use vertical toolbars by default. Some koffice apps like kword do. According to the HIG, a better solution is to display less default toolbars, perferably 3 or less rows. 25. The GNOME HIG says that if toolbar is configured to show labels beside button icons rather than below them, only show text for most used ones or it'll get too wide in a hurry. Evolution, for example, shows check mail, etc.. KDE apps show text for all icons. 26. The GNOME HIG says that toolbar icon tooltips should be more descriptive than the corresponding menu item. For example, "Create New Document" instead of "New". KDE apps don't follow this, but rather give a tooltip of the menu item itself. 27. The GNOME HIG says that if the user types three invalid characters in a row in an entry field that accepts only keystrokes valid in the task context, such as digits, display an alert that explains the valid inputs for that textfield. If less than 3, beep. KDE apps follows the latter, but not the former. 28. The GNOME HIG says that pressing Ctrl-Tab in a multi-line entry field should move focus to the next control. KDE uses this to flip desktops. 29. The GNOME HIG says that sliders should be used the value relative to its current value is more important than choosing an absolute value. Some places in kcontrol don't follow this, especially things like timeouts. Appearance->Launch Feedback in cvs, for example. Also, the GNOME HIG says that linked spinboxes and sliders should have sliders first and spinboxes second (depending on the locale)--- as the slider will more often be used. This is reversed in KDE in some places (like Launch Feedback), and is not reversed in others (KPanel options) 30. The GNOME HIG says that checkboxes should clearly show effects of both their checked and unchecked states. If it doesn't, a radio button or combobox is better. This is broken in some places in KDE. For example, kcontrol->KDE Components->File Manager->Display file sizes in bytes. It's not clear what the effect of the unchecked state is. Also, checkboxes/radio buttons should enable/disable valid options/controls depending on their state. This is usually followed in KDE apps, but sometimes isn't (like kcontrol->Panels->menus->QuickBrowser Menus-> Show Hidden files should disable/enabled number of entries) 31. The GNOME HIG says not to use comboboxes/option-type menus in situations where there is more than 10 menu items, especially in preferences/configration dialogs. A better solution is lists or a seperate dialog. This isn't followed in some places in KDE, for example, Konqueror options->Web Browser->Fonts. 32. The GNOME HIG says to always label listboxes/views in some fashion. It isn't in some places in KDE. For example, kcontrol->appearance->Theme Manager or Splash Screen themes. 33. The GNOME HIG says to use Tree controls with a lot of care, because they are very complex, even for intermediate users. KDE doesn't follow this at all. Kcontrol itself is a giant tree control. It also says to label all tree controls. This isn't followed in kcontrol. 34. The GNOME HIG says to label tabs in header capitalization (like "Hi There"). 99% of all KDE apps do this, but there are a few that don't. For example, kcontrol->Local Network Browsing->lan:/ and rlan:/ tab (this needs to be reworded, anyway) 35. The GNOME HIG says to not assign accel keys to any tab labels-- they can't be used within tabs then. KDE apps don't do this. 36. The GNOME HIG says to use a list control instead of tabs when there is expected to be too many tabs to display in a screen. This might actually be good in things like a web browser. 37. The GNOME HIG says that taskbars should display information about the task the user is currently performing or when over a menu or toolbar. Some KDE apps follow this at least partially (Konqueror...), others don't (kwrite) 38. When there is no interesting status to report, the The GNOME HIG says to leave a status bar panel blank rather than displaying something uninformative like "Ready". This way, when something interesting does appear in the status bar, the user is more likely to notice it. Many KDE apps display "Ready." I strongly agree with the HIG here. 39. In statusbars, the GNOME HIG says to use a inlaid appearance for areas that respond to a double click and flat appearance for areas that are not interactive. Apps like kwrite don't follow this. 40. The GNOME HIG says that rather than using bordered frames, to use frames without borders, bold labels, and indented contents. It says that bordered frames add visual noise that can both make a window appear more complex than it really is, and reduce the ability to quickly scan window elements. Bordered frames are used quite heavily within KDE. 41. The GNOME HIG says to discard unnecessary operations. For example, to move back several pages in a web browser, a user might click the browser's Back button several times in rapid succession. To display the final requested page more quickly, the browser might not display the pages visited between the current page and that final page. This doesn't happen in Konqueror. 42. The GNOME HIG says that not when using configurable colors, to use colors the basic 32-color pallete vaiable from http://www.ximian.com/images/art-devel/ximian-palette for default colors. KDE instead uses the Qt-16 color pallete in some places, like kate. The GNOME pallete has been optimized for people with deuteranopia, and tritanopia, two kinds of color-blindness that effect 11% of all users in the world. The The GNOME HIG recommends using these and lighter and darker shades of these for default colors. They would be useful in places liks syntax highlighting in kate. 43. The GNOME HIG says to use a 12 pixel padding between window and controls, and 6 pixels between controls (and 12 pixels between labels and controls). KDE's default is something like 4 and 3 pixels, I beleive. Also, it says to align objects vertically when possible. Indenting is recommended at 12 pixels. 44. The GNOME HIG says not to avoid vague text in icons. For example, the ksirc icon is vague. The kmail icon is fine.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Eron Lloyd - 2003-06-15
Wow, that's a fantastic analysis! This deserves to be put somewhere in the Usability website...a good examination of the differences of KDE & GNOME's UI standards. Thanks!
Re: Maybe you should listen - Aaron J. Seigo - 2003-06-15
1. this is only useful if the tooltips differ significantly from the menu items. this would obviously take quite a bit of work. it also isn't very easy to do with the majority of your menu entries are provided by libraries and not hand coded. 2. mixing instant apply and explicity apply is a recipe for insanity. not all things lend themselves to instant apply as the changes may be invasive, security related or take quite some time to take affect (>3 seconds). erring on the side of caution and consistency says "explicit apply". 3. this is a good idea and something that has been discussed. it's a lot of work however as it will require grepping the source for every instance of KMessageBox and fixing it. it should also result in a new set of static KMessageBox methods to accomodate this in a standard method. know anyone who wants somewhere to spend a few hundred hours on it? 4. this is not often a problem, but sometimes it can indeed be confusing. part of the challenge is that apps don't usually handle the authentication themselves, but the base libraries do. to know what was being authenticated and why would require some introspection from the library to the application. 5. *shrug* 6. good idea, and the support is already there (KPrintDialog::printerDialog takes a caption argument, and KPrinter::setup which is how this is usually called does this as well). just takes someone grepping the code. 7. so why did you mention this again? 8. agreed... 9. given the limited number of characters in most languages and the fact that many applications automerge the UIs of several different apps without knowing beforehand which ones or what their UI actually is this is far fetched as a 100% achievable goal. sometimes the GNOME HIG seems to assume a simple, static interface. such utopian states is not always what reality is made of. 10. the kmenu is an odd thing: it's a faithful user-configurable representation of the application .desktop files. the problem isn't that the KMenu has multiple levels and is therefore broken, but that different menu paradigms are probably useful for most. 11. many kde utils don't put their buttons at the bottom of the window. sometimes it's aesthetics, sometimes ergonomics. in the case of kfind, it mimics other KDE find dialogs and is embedable as a part in other apps (making bottom-buttons not a great option). these are the exceptions, and usually with good reasons for them. standard KDE dialogs ALL have the buttons at the bottom. so i don't agree with your point here. 12. why put menu bars in applications that have at most 2 or 3 items to put in them? do users get confused when they don't see a menu bar? or is a menu bar in those cases just more complexity and interface noise? the 'G' in HIG is for "guideline" not "rule". common sense must be applied as well, right? 13. agreed... this is a tough one, though, as the toolbar many be present either. ;-) 14. some KDE apps need menu reorg and rethought, yes. 15. and how will the user learn the key combination if it is so effectively hidden? 16. sort of like 14. 17. sort of like 16. ;-) that said, not having sub menus is sometimes a stupid idea, especially when you have dynamic sections (such as servicemenus) in an already large menu. BeOS had an Actions submenu, too. btw, they're usually referred to as "context menus", not "popup menus". 18. another "some menus need reorg'ing" thing. you could've wrapped up the last several items into one point, me thinks. 19. What you talkin' 'bout Willis? the KDE UIG state: "Notice that every item in a menu that first opens a dialog requiring additional information must be labelled with a trailing ellipsis". Preferneces, er, Configure <whatever> does require further input, so does get an ellipses. Delete, About, etc don't. there are people that watch this in KDE CVS, and infractions are quickly fixed. i don't know what you're going on about with this point. 20. i wonder if users think in terms of locality. and who's to say that printing is more local than sending to a remote system? the printer might be down the hall, the remote system might be in the same room. 21. i don't think KDE handles Undo/Redo differently. and the Edit menu is NOT where preferences belong. KDE UIG says: " All actions available in the Edit menu manipulate elements of the content area (nothing else!)." that makes lots of sense. and when you see how many items are in a Settings menu it makes even more sense. a menu called Settings is about as clear as it gets, and keeps the Edit menu clear and small. 22. there is a good reason Konsole doesn't follow this. and if you think about it for a few moments, you'll probably figure it out! try this: open a konsole and start using it. after a few commands, where is your locus of attention? why, at the bottom of the screen. if the session switcher bar is at the top, you have to keep moving your eyes and attention between the top and the bottom of the window. not very ergonomic. downright stupid, actually. no, the switcher belongs at the bottom where your locus of attention will be 99% of the time. in KDE 3.2 the toolbar will likely be replaced with a tab bar anyways. and it will be by default at the bottom. again, common sense. 23. agreed. i've put this on my TODO, and it shouldn't be very hard to do such that all KDE apps that support toolbar config will get it automatically. 24. *shrug* 25. a nicety, i suppose. assumes the programmer knows what is commonly used, or difficult to understand, but that should usually be manageable to figure out. in any case, like #4 this requires deeper introspection by the libraries into applications and their state than is currently possible. many, and often most, menu/toolbar entries in a KDE app are provided by KDE libraries themselves. 26. the tooltip helps cement the relationship between the toolbar item and the menu entry. WhatsThis help is another matter altogether, and should be more verbose and helpful. in KDE menu entries and toolbar entries are usually one and the same thing within the program, btw. 27. very good concept. also on my TODO. 28. agreed. this is bad for accessability. 29. i agree with the GNOME HIG here. i'll probably post a patch for switching the order of the widgets shortly. 30. i agree with the clarity part, but the part about enabling/disabling dependant widgets really annoyed me. what you found in the panel config dialog was a bug, not a HIG problem. a bug. like any other. you have the where-with-all to find it, notice it and write about it in a lengthy 40+ point posting, but you can't go to bugs.kde.org and file the problem? anyways, it's fixed now. i wonder how many other similar microbugs people such as yourself are quietly sitting on? 31. in the dialog you mention there are too many font settings to give each a list. and giving a dialog just for the list is silly; a general purpose font dialog won't do since the user can only define the font, not the size, weight or style. i think you're misapplying the GNOME HIG. 32. where list headers are prudent, they should be there. but they aren't always prudent. 33. agreed. KControl is set to get some luvin' and usage of trees is diminishing. 34. the reason why KDE is so consistent here is because of a few very dedicated, wonderful people who proof read all those things. there's even a KDE widget style that autohighlights these sorts of errors. neat huh? as for the lan and rlan tab heading, that's because they are the PROPER NAMES of the items in question. it isn't Lan and Rlan, it's lan:/ and rlan:/. they are protocols. i agree a better name could likely be found, but if that is the name then the capitalization is right. 34 is a non-point. 35. talk about stating the obvious. so if there are accels available that aren't used in the tabs, then they shouldn't be put to work to make switching tabs easier? what kind of stupidity is that? *shakes head* 36. a list control or else rethinking the dialog. and one or the other is what usually happens, btw. 37. yes, more humdrum work to do that 99% of users will never notice. it should be done, of course, but the people who will appreciate it the most are reviewers, critics and people like yourself. great way to spend time. 38. agreed. you should compile a list of apps that do this. then create patches. it would be trivial. 39. difference in style. so what? 40. i disagree with both stands. i often find non-bordered windows with many options more difficult to use as there isn't a visual compartmentalization. i don't agree with having heavy borders, since those are distracting. something that suggests a tasteful, subtle hint would do well. we had a patch that got rid of all groupbox borders and i used it for nearly a month. boy were things less clear; perhaps with a complete rewrite of every dialog we could approach something decent, but that's a lot of work when probably all that's needed is a nicely done frame that isn't so visually obtrusive. 41. agreed. 42. 11% of people have a hard time seeing the syntax highlighting in kate? 43. KDE's defaults are 12 and 6 as well. and vertical placement is generally preferred. what's your point again? 44. yes, some icons could be improved. your 44 point list is much longer than it really ought to be.
Re: Maybe you should listen - lit - 2003-06-15
> your 44 point list is much longer than it really ought to be. I was just trying to highlight ways in which KDE and the GNOME HIG differ in terms of usability. I wasn't really trying to say which side I thought was better or what not-- except whcn I said so. Keep in mind that a list of similarities between the two would have been MUCH MUCH larger. The numbers are arbitary- perhaps I shouldn't have numbered. > 2. mixing instant apply and explicity apply is a recipe for insanity. Fully agreed. > 7. so why did you mention this again? Hmm, I don't think I did :) > 9. given the limited number of characters in most languages I don't think this is as much of a problem as... > 9. (continued...) the fact that many applications automerge the UIs of several different apps without knowing beforehand which ones or what their UI actually is this is far fetched as a 100% achievable goal. Yes, this is a problem unfortuantly. GNOME tends to use less components in terms of things like dialog boxes and configure dialogs than KDE does, and especially doesn't try embed to dialogs within larger dialogs as widgets, as KDE does with things like kcontrol, kspell configs within koffice, and many other places. This part of the GNOME hug is unrealistic for KDE. > 10. the kmenu is an odd thing: it's a faithful user-configurable representation of the application .desktop files. the problem isn't that the KMenu has multiple levels and is therefore broken, but that different menu paradigms are probably useful for most. Agreed-- the kmenu is fine. In fact, the foot menu in GNOME even has a additional layer of submenus than the kmenu does. This is why it was largely depreceated in favor of the "Applications" menu, which has a simliar layer of submenus as the kmenu does, except for "More Programs", etc... I don't think this is much of a problem though. The kmenu is essentially a system menu, and thus might be more complicated than other menus. However, users tend to use system menus so much that they can typically memorize and effectively scan through large parts of it. This is similiar to what is said in Apple's pre-Aqua HIG. Apple chose not to add heirarchial menus to the MacOS apple menu for a long time. However, they did further usability tests and found that heirarchial menus (and in some cases, doubly heirarchial menus) within special menus like this were perfectly fine. > 11. so i don't agree with your point here. Again, not my point, was just contrasting differencies. > 12. why put menu bars in applications that have at most 2 or 3 items to put in them? I think you'll find that users will get confused if there is no menubar. The way to fix this problem is to treat kfind/kfloppy-type apps as dialogs (when not embedded..) That way, users won't look for a menubar. > 15. and how will the user learn the key combination if it is so effectively hidden? Through regular toplevel (non popup) menus. Popup menus, according to the HIG, are meant to be efficient and quick for intermediate and advanced users- who will likely know the combos from regular menus anyways. Remember that popup menus are essentially shortcut menus-- not places to learn key combos. I still agree with the HIG here. > 16. sort of like 14. Sufficiently different from 14 :).. the problem is that in some parts, KDE lacks consistancy here. For example, when I right click on the trash in cvs, I get the default option, "Open". When I click on a directory in konqueror, I get "Create New Directory" (which needs be removed, by the way)... > 17. sort of like 16. ;-) that said, not having sub menus is sometimes a stupid idea, especially when you have dynamic sections (such as servicemenus) in an already large menu. BeOS had an Actions submenu, too. btw, they're usually referred to as "context menus", not "popup menus". Agreed that not having sometimes not having submenus is a stupid idea. As per terminology, I was simply using the GNOME HIG's one. > 18 .... you could've wrapped up the last several items into one point, me thinks. Probably, but I was doing individual subtopic by subtopic, instead of broad topic-- so I could elabortate more. > 19 ... there are people that watch this in KDE CVS, and infractions are quickly fixed Good point. I probably should have said that configure and preferences dialogs don't get ellipses under the GNOME hig, but do under KDE. I'm not sure which method is "right" here-- as configure dialogs often do require input, but not often specific input. Some config dialogs, like kkeychooser, don't require input as defined by the GNOME hig at all. > 20. ... i wonder if users think in terms of locality.. the printer might be down the hall, the remote system might be in the same room. Apparently people do think in terms of locality when it comes to file-type menus. You have a good point with remote printers. > 22. there is a good reason Konsole doesn't follow this. and if you think about it for a few moments, you'll probably figure it out! Yes, I know why Konsole has it's toolbar at the bottom by default :) However, according to the HIG, most new users won't think to look for a toolbar at the bottom. It's good that it's being replaced by tabs in 3.2. I personally think it's fine to leave it at the bottom.. it's essentially a taskbar type of thing. > 24. The GNOME HIG says to not use vertical toolbars by default. It says this because "The eye does not scan vertically as well as it does horizontally, groups of mutually exclusive buttons are less obvious when arranged vertically, and showing button labels is more awkard and less space-efficient. Also, some toolbar controls just cannot be used vertically, such as dropdown lists." > 30. it's fixed now. i wonder how many other similar microbugs people such as yourself are quietly sitting on? I only noticed it after reading the HIG. Perhaps some novice user would be confused by it, though. Anyway, the goal of my post was to show differences between current KDE and the GNOME HIG, and similiarities as well; not to show bugs. > 31. in the dialog you mention there are too many font settings to give each a list. and giving a dialog just for the list is silly; a general purpose font dialog won't do since the user can only define the font, not the size, weight or style. i think you're misapplying the GNOME HIG. Agreed. Perhaps not a good example. > 34. is a non-point. agreed. was being too nit-picky here. > 37. it the most are reviewers, critics and people like yourself I don't personally care _that_ much about usability, actually. I'm not a critic of KDE either, I love it. I think perhaps a little consistancy is in order, though. > 38. agreed. you should compile a list of apps that do this. then create patches. it would be trivial. Sorry.. I wrote this thinking it was an accepted thing in the KDE UIG. It isn't. > 39. difference in style. so what? I think the idea is that inlaid areas look somewhat like a button to users. > 42. 11% of people have a hard time seeing the syntax highlighting in kate? Yeah-- based on default colors in kate. KDE could use some accessible color schemes-- anyway, this is > your 44 point list is much longer than it really ought to be. or longer, or shorter. It's just how I wrote it. Perhaps I shouldn't have numbered at all.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Aaron J. Seigo - 2003-06-15
i realize you were just highlighting differences... i wanted to give some light as to perhaps why some of those differences existed: sometimes it's a bug, sometimes KDE has pooched the dog, sometimes it's just a difference in style/attitude, sometimes the GNOEM HIG pooched the dog. =) btw, you say you're not "that" interested in usability, but you obviously have an eye for details and a good deal of patience and follow up, judging from your posts to this article. ;-) it would be GREAT if you could post bug reports for the things you notice (or even create patches; you seem to be a developer yourself?). KDE, and therefore Free Software in general, would benefit from this. my TODO now has a few more items on it thanks to your list.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Ruediger Knoerig - 2003-06-15
>HIG is meant to be followed by everyone, including developers who may think >otherwise. Better do it the KDE way. If the uses wishes it the other way he has the right to do it so. >GNOME apps actually look very consistent RClick on the taskbar on some app. For most apps, nothing happens. For some apps, a context menu pops up. Very rare is the opportunity to move the taskbars like KDE users are used to. Gnome simply lacks the powerful framework of KDE and it is written in a wrong language for GUI stuff whilst this is the domain of OO paradigm. Viewing widgets and windows as objects is simply natural and leads to clean code and the derivation mechanism allows quick and safe extensions of existing work done by others. Looking at Gtk its quite amusing how desperate they try to map the OO paradigm in C.
Re: Maybe you should listen - VL User - 2003-06-14
> The goal of KDE is to empower the user. There comes a point when this becomes ridiculous though. Right click on the desktop (KDE 3.1.0) and you are given the choice, to align the icons vertically or horizontally or to the grid? What the hell? Who needs this kind of flexibility? It just slows you down because you end up looking at the choices thinking, why would I possibly want to choose between the three? Is there something I don't understand about using the desktop where this could become useful? What would be a killer feature would be a grid like system that could be drawn on the desktop with intersecting horizontal and vertical lines with movable nodes where the lines intersect. Exactly like what is used in morphing software. This could be another power-to-the-user KControl entry. Then the user could choose how many lines to draw and then move the horizontal lines up and down, with variable spacing between the lines, and move the vertical lines left and right, with variable spacing between the lines, and move the intersecting nodes wherever they like. The user could even have different layouts for different desktops, or different purposes. Now only keep the option that reads Align to grid, and drop the other two options (align vertically / horizontally). By default, a newbie will not know about this funtionality and that is fine because the icons will simply snap to the square grid that he is used to in Windows. On the other hand, the power user will also be happy as the icons now snap to whatever shape he has created for himself. In one move, you have both given power to the user and rid KDE of "bloat". This is what I understand by people complaining of there are too many options in KDE. Simplify the many options into less options while giving power to the user at the same time. Imagine a circular, or a wavy grid that runs across the screen. No-one offers this. This would put KDE ahead of everyone in terms of this particular feature. > Little to no impact on improving KDE can come from Gnome as Gnome is not or not openly developed as KDE. I disagree. We can learn how Ximian has learnt what works from MS land. There are many carbon-copied features of XP that show up in XD2. This in my opinion is a good thing if the features are good features. Was that not the idea behind KDE, to take the best features from the different OS's, incorporate them and then improve them? Ximian is doing this right now. One thing that KDE implemented from MS land which they shouldn't of is the dotted-line bounding box around selected icons, as well as default buttons. This "feature" appeared in 95/98/(Me?) but was removed from 2K and XP. MS land: If I want a file on the desktop to lose focus, I can click on the desktop. Now the desktop has focus, so the file that was selected appears completely unselected. That makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Now go to KDE or 95/98/Me land: If you do the same thing the bounding box remains, making the file look like it is still somehow selected. This is poor UI design, which MS thankfully fixed with 2K. Another side effect of the bounding box is the total lag you feel when you move an icon quickly on the desktop. The bounding box tries to play catch-up with the moving icon and is left behind. If the bounding box was removed, this lag would also disappear. The bounding box on default buttons, IMHO is simply ugly. It should be removed for pure aesthetic reasons. Using a lighter colour on the default button, for instance, would be great as it could instantly be standard across all the different available styles. > CAPS is not appreciated either and never has been the indication of person capable or willing to help I don't think that this is a fair comment. The more you love something, the more you express emotion about it. I feel that he was simply trying to get that level of emotion across. I prefer KDE to Gnome, and I want KDE to outshine any DE available, regardless of the platform. To do this, we need people with passion. Without passion, how can you get exited about anything? VL User
Re: Maybe you should listen - Datschge - 2003-06-15
Regarding the choices for icon placement on the desktop: For me in KDE 3.1.2 it's all in a neatly sorted submenu called "icons" so it doesn't feel like bloat at all. Your idea to let the power user define his own arbitrary order in which the icons are aligned is nice, but I'm sure quite some people will scream about how KDE's setting library Control Center just got even more "bloated" due to that. In any case the one who really needs it is welcomed to implement it (or pay someone to do so). KDE never has been about copying from other systems, in many cases the developers use only KDE and implement whatever useful feature they need or other people request. It's funny how many people come again and again comparing KDE to other systems expecting everyone eg. to install XD2 or buy Windows Server 2003, asking someone to do this is simply ridiculous. Instead describe what's needed and why it's needed and how it fits into KDE. The bounding box which apears around one icon on the desktop or one button in your current application is the cursor which you can control with your keyboard in case you prefer that over a mouse. Removing it removes a necessary cursor indicator for using KDE's GUI with a keyboard. (Are you sure that got removed from 2K and XP?) As for caps: Caps are commonly considered as screaming, which again is considered as highly impolite. So if you want to make a really bad impression regardless of what you want to say write everything in caps. Also emotions and passion are nice and dandy, but please refrain from inflicting that on others too much, you might just annoy everyone with it when always taken in overdoses.
Re: Maybe you should listen - Maynard - 2003-06-15
I think he thing about arbitrary alignment was meant as an extreme example of how customizability can become stupid. But then again, I think you got that. Just to be sure.
Re: Maybe you should listen - lit - 2003-06-15
I don't think this is a very good example however. Practically every desktop, from classic MacOS (since around ~6.0-ish) to Windows (since 95) has had this set of features. Even GNOME 1.4 had it. Only GNOME 2.0-2.2 are missing the align to grid feature. There was a patch for Nautilus floating around that added align to grid. I think it's there in GNOME 2.3.2, though. It's hardly an extreme example. In fact, it's a good example of why gnome2.x pisses me off so much compared to practically everything else in existance :)
Re: Maybe you should listen - Maynard - 2003-06-15
No i meant the part where he said there should be an option for a power user to be able to define his own grid and arbitrary angles and stuff to that effect. Align to grid is perfect by me.
Re: Maybe you should listen - VL User - 2003-06-15
I think you misunderstood my post :) I was using this as a serious example of how we can simultaneously remove options and increase power at the same time. Where would we remove options? Remove Align Vertically and Align Horizontally from the desktop context-menu. Where would we add power? Add a completely customisable Grid KControl entry. How does this achieve both objectives simultaneously? Less options on the desktop context-menu, and Align to Grid now has two meanings: 1. Align to a square grid - which is what the newbie is expecting. 2. Align to -any- shape grid - which is what the power user is expecting. This will never be an issue for a newbie as it will work as he expects. He can then later "upgrade" his skills by defining a grid shape when becomes more proficient with KDE. Here is another example. When I move an icon on the desktop, such as a file and drop it onto a folder a pop-up menu asks me, do I want to copy or move the file? I have to answer this choice every time I do this. This makes it painful to move files in this manner and annoying that KDE tries to hold my hand. Why can't we rather have default actions such as the following: Standard drag-and-drop = move file to target folder Alt+ drag-and-drop = copy file to target folder Ctrl + drag-and-drop = create a shortcut in the target folder shift + drag-and-drop = another action. Window-key + drag-and-drop = another action. ... you get the picture. Then have a separate list of default actions for other types of icons: For example: Drop an Ogg file onto a Konq. link: Standard drag-and-drop = Launch Konq. and play in the media side-bar. Alt+ drag-and-drop = Launch Konq. with gg:filetype. trl + drag-and-drop = Launch Konq. with Konq. help on file type. shift + drag-and-drop = Launch Konq. with another action. Window-key + drag-and-drop = Launch Konq. with another action. ... I'm just sowing the seed, please modify this into a workable solution :) MS deals with this by letting you hold an icon and letting you press the Alt key, and a corresponding overlay icon will appear to show you what action is going to be taken. If you are still holding the icon and press the Shift key, followed by the Alt key, the overlay icon will change. In a few seconds you have now learnt which keys are associated with which action. We can learn these little tips from the other OS's. VL User
Re: Maybe you should listen - VL User - 2003-06-15
>Regarding the choices for icon placement ... A submenu just for icon placement? Sounds like bloat to me :) As long as Align to Grid is toggleable, then I am okay with that. In KDE 3.1.0, the icons only align once. If you subsequently move an icon, you have to align to grid again. > Your idea to let the power user define his own ... I understand you concern about having another KControl entry, it could simply be added to an existing entry. > KDE never has been about copying ... I disagree with you here. Many KDE features are carbon copies of MS, such as the find dialog. The MS find dialog was horrid, but KDE copied it exactly. > The bounding box ... My statement was correct, MS did remove the bounding box from icons in 2K/XP. It did not remove the bounding box from buttons and html links for that matter. This was a separate point that I made pointing out that I thought it was an ugly looking solution in general. In 2K land, if a desktop icon is highlit and you click on the desktop the icon loses focus and -looks- unselected. If you then press up or down on the arrow keys, the correct upper or lower icon is selected, if it exists. The last selected icon is remembered, even though it looks totally unselected when it loses focus. This is a sane way to deal with the nasty looking bounding box. My point about bounding box lag when icons are moved is another reason to kill this behaviour. > As for caps: ... Agreed. VL User
Re: Maybe you should listen - Datschge - 2003-06-17
> My point about bounding box lag when icons are moved is another reason to kill this behaviour. Please check out whether the following patch helps http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-optimize&m=104463123606728
Re: Maybe you should listen - lit - 2003-06-15
> One thing that KDE implemented from MS land which they shouldn't of is the dotted-line bounding box around selected icons, as well as default buttons. This "feature" appeared in 95/98/(Me?) but was removed from 2K and XP. If I want a file on the desktop to lose focus, I can click on the desktop. Now the desktop has focus, so the file that was selected appears completely unselected. That makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I think that this feature should be removed personally. In reality, what KDE is doing is drawing the focus rect on the icon with the current keyboard focus. You can press the up key or whatever to go to the next icon. However, you're right. It does appear like a leftover selection, and is confusing to users. I myself was confused the first time I saw this-- the only reason I knew what it was because I've made QStyles and I recognized the focus rect. > The bounding box on default buttons, IMHO is simply ugly. It should be removed for pure aesthetic reasons. Using a lighter colour on the default button, for instance, would be great as it could instantly be standard across all the different available styles. This really depends on the widget style in use. Widget styles can pretty much do whatever they want in differentating the default button from regular buttons, including what you mentioned. I do think that it really depends on the widget style whether the default button box looks good or not. In some, like kde 2.x's web style, I love it, and in other styles, I don't. > Imagine a circular, or a wavy grid that runs across the screen. No-one offers this. This would put KDE ahead of everyone in terms of this particular feature. Ah yes, the famous staggered grid from classic MacOS. Thanks for reminding me- now on my ever growing todo list. Please stand in your seat once KDE 3.2 arrives. That little submenu is going to get extended by one.
Re: Maybe you should listen - VL User - 2003-06-16
> Ah yes, the famous staggered grid from classic MacOS I have never owned a Mac, so I wasn't trying to compare this to a Mac :) Does the Mac really offer the flexibility I was talking about, eg. variable grid lines with movable intersecting nodes? Thank you for adding it to your todo list :) VL User
Re: Maybe you should listen - nac - 2003-06-15
>> One thing that KDE implemented from MS land which they shouldn't of is the dotted-line bounding box around selected icons, as well as default buttons. This "feature" appeared in 95/98/(Me?) but was removed from 2K and XP. Actually, it isn't removed from 2K and XP.. It's just hidden away and can be enabled or disabled somewhere in that right-click-on-the-desktop-dialog (you know, with the desktop settings in it). When you use the mouse to select things (ie. widgets, icons..) the focus rectangles (dotted lines) will stay away (not only from widgets, but also from those icons, including icons on the desktop). When you start using the keyboard (I believe it happens after pressing ALT) you'll see the dotted lines everywhere again.
Re: Maybe you should listen - VL User - 2003-06-16
Argh, you are right. Sometimes the icon is highlit without the bounding box, which looks great and other times if you tab through to the desktop it draws the bounding box. My apologies for the misleading statements. I still would like it scraped from KDE though. VL User
Re: Maybe you should listen - nac - 2003-06-16
I don't think it should be removed. While I don't like the focus rectangles because they're terrible to look at, they're great for usability. KDE just needs (yet another) option to hide these things ;) (possibly in Windows style using ALT activation)
Re: Maybe you should listen - NoName - 2003-06-15
What is XD2? I did a google search but it took me to a web design company. Is it something to do with enlightenment?
Re: Maybe you should listen - Anonymous - 2003-06-15
http://www.ximian.com/products/desktop/ - is there something like usability for marketing? :-)
Re: Maybe you should listen - NoName - 2003-06-15
What is XD2? I did a google search but it took me to a web design company. Is it something to do with enlightenment?
Re: Good change of focus - ac - 2003-06-14
Not to mention XD2 breaks KDE when you install it.
Re: Good change of focus - Maynard - 2003-06-14
You shall become the third person I correct about menu editing in XD2 today. You can do it in two ways. The first, somewhat akin to Windows, is to use Nautilus. You can add and remove launchers from the directory heirarchy and the menu will be upated. The second is to right click in the menu and you have an option ot add/remove/edit menu entries very directly. Enough for me. Maybe not for you though. It seems some people still prefer the separate app for menu editing. I think KDE does deserve a polish job too. You should see some of the stuff on gnomesupport.org (Do not worry, they do not flame KDE there). Just read for interests sake and see what they are talking about. I thik it makes sense. There is no need for KDE to be less powerful to get good defaults and get rid of a lot of maybe unnecesary stuff. And agreed with you on XD2. They should actually look at it to get an idea on how to polish KDE. Not that XD2 is perfect though. I have already noticed a number of issues, and some were pointed out to me. But it is GOOD.
I know - Alex - 2003-06-14
"I can not edit the menu easily" yes, it can be edited, I already knew that, but it is not as easy or as powerful as in KDE. Also I agree a KDE company like Ximian would rock I guess TheKompany is kind of like that but they are so much smaller, don't make things free =p and are focused and doinga great job for the zaurus. Though, if they get our support they will grow. But, when you have Quanta Plus, why would you want to downgrade to quanta gold apart from the better support for more platforms (yes quanta can run on other platforms too, but it is not as easy or integrated)
Re: I know - lit - 2003-06-14
TheKompany is quite different from Ximian...TheKompany focuses on cross platform products -- that's where the money is. TheKompany used to focus mostly on KDE applications. However, they were tied less to KDE than Ximian is to GNOME. This is because no KDE core developer or founding (as in, no developer who started working on KDE before 1997 or so), was ever employed by tkc. Ximian, on the other hand, was founded by gnome-core hackers and founding developers. Tkc pretty much went where the money is-- very few companies can make commercial success from ONLY developing for the Linux desktop. I think the rapid bankruptcy of Eazel proved this. Ximian has pretty much stayed in the Linux desktop market by being smart. They've secured a lot of partnerships, and focused on primarily enterprise applications (where bling bling $$$ is) I'm not sure if KDE needs a Ximian though. It'd of course be nice to have some core KDE developers employed by a company that cares only about KDE, but on the other hand, KDE is developed in a much more of a Bazaar-environment than GNOME historically has. It's worked for nearly six years folks-- sometimes it's better just not to change.
Re: Good change of focus - ac - 2003-06-14
Good website. A couple of reviews of XD2: "The impression I get so far from the reviews of XD2 is that its kind of rushed and buggy in places. I'll be sticking with stock debian gnome, I think - theres no way I'm installing Ximian GNOME after the way it trashed my system when I installed the previous version." "Actually compared to a review I read just before XD2 came out, this is a pretty fair review. I've always loved Ximian stuff, but there really are more problems here than I expected. I use apt-rpm and synaptic, and my dependencies were just destroyed by the Ximian install. As the reviewer pointed out, most of the icons in your menus are gone, which gives the desktop a bad feel. Without a doubt, there's a lot of nice additions, but there's so many things I'm having problems with, I'm not sure it's worth it. (One other poster on the review's website noted how much OpenOffice Writer Ximian version crashes -- I can't even use it.) This is disappointing to me because I've waited eagerly for this for a year and half. And now I'm considering reinstalling RedHat 9 because everything works better, the dependences aren't all messed up. To put up with some of the problems I'm having, I feel like the upside should be MUCH higher than it's turning out to be. I think Ximian is a victim of their own hype. While this is certainly just more "opinion", when my friends who look to me as their Linux guinea pig ask me if they should install Ximian Desktop 2, I really can't say yes without adding all kinds of qualifications. :-( I'm used to saying: "Hell Yes!""
Ximian form of KDE - Eron Lloyd - 2003-06-14
You know, this has been on my mind all week...is it perhaps time for KDE members to form a Ximian-like company to charge forward into the marketplace? The efforts of SuSE, Connectiva, etc. are wonderful (I am a long-time SuSE user), but as Linus himself said, from now on the exciting stuff will happen on the desktop, and the distros still aren't there, focusing on the desktop like Ximian is. I've been working on a document outlining my thoughts on this issue (and considering if perhaps we could even do it). Anybody interested in discussing this drop me a line. I think the KDE community is stronger than just about any other, but *it is my opinion* that for some reason we are still too passive about gaining marketshare. I made a laundry-list of KDE's strengths, and it is amazing. It is hard to understand why people would want to use anything else (some areas need work, yes, but the potential is there!!). KDE truly is an end-to-end solution, covering everything from desktop utilities, Internet applications, office suite components, to groupware (and all native!) I'm not yet confident to contribute code (I'm still a student...maybe soon), however I'm excited about getting involved in other ways (documentation, usability studies, training, promotion, financial contributions). Yet I wonder if the KDE project can continue to scale as it is as a volunteer-driven meritocracy...while I'm sure some people would disagree, I think most would support a commercial venture of KDE developers, designers, and advocates incorporating. Many people I talk to like the idea of KDE, but are afraid to take the plunge because there is no business behind it, providing corporate support, training, boxed packages & documentation, etc. Look how much more success you can have giving your boss a boxed copy of Redhat 9 with a 90-day support certificate vs. a burned CD-ROM. This isn't to downplay the contributions of the Linux distributions, but to ask instead "Can KDE stand on its own?" Can it's community continue to scale with it's success?
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Eric Laffoon - 2003-06-14
I'd say your approach is a little bit naive. Ximian came through on the trailing edge of the dotcom boom. It was quite a feather in Nat Friedman's cap. Also it was $30 million in venture capital. That changes everything, and in both good and bad ways. So right up front we need to say that a relatively equal entity needs a rather large pile of cash. All other things being equal, do you have that much money laying around? Currently there are several small companies like Matthias Kalle Dalheimer's Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB which is involved in major enhancements to KDE's email capabilities and also recently hired David Faure. My company sponsors Andras Mantia and recently two individuals stepped up for some notable sponsorship levels of their own. There are also organized groups associated with KDE with the specific mission to to get more people exposed. The example of handing your boss a CD vs a copy of RH with 90 days of service seems like a good example of public misconception. One of the first things they teach you in customer service schools is that the way to develop customer loyalty is to have something small broken that you can handle effectively for a customer. This exposure creates more loyalty than not having a problem. Sometimes I think RH has learned this too well with the odd bugs that always seem to be only on RH. Recently my partner asked me if we might try to offer enhanced service to web shops running Quanta. We actually had a contributor make a feature request for code shortcuts which we delivered to him in less than four hours. The funny thing is that right now users can email our user list and have an answer anywhere from minutes to hours, which usually substantially beats not only commercial software but my experience with Linux vendors. Problems I've used my free customer support with have taken days and been less than satsifactory in my mind. Direct to developer contact has consistently been better and more satsifying. As for a KDE distribution I use one... it's also a GNOME distribution. Gentoo rocks! There are lots of great things about it... it leaves KDE as the developers intended, it allows me to get speed by optimizing for my hardware and it gets me off the upgrade treadmill with CDs and RPMs. Gentoo now has sponsors supporting it's development, as does Quanta. The reality is that other models besides the Ximian model are currently producing many good things. Many small consultants will spring up to service the marketplace with KDE. There are a lot of strategic avenues to work with. Unless you have deep pockets and years of solid business experience you are looking for piles of trouble trying to emulate the Ximian model. Frankly I don't see a need for it.
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Eron Lloyd - 2003-06-14
That is an interesting perspective. And quite frankly, if I was going to produce such an effort, you would be recruited for PR, as you do very well at promoting Quanta and communicating with the users. Still, I'm not sure that the question is necessarily naive. Do you think it has to start on such a large scale as Ximian? Do you think such a large project such as KDE *can* sustain itself indefinately without some kind of direct commercial backing? I don't know of too many other projects that are (especially ones that have such a direct impact on the experience of the end-user). Look at our own Qt! It is much more successful than gtk+, partly because it has commercial motivations and obligations. The markets help to drive it's success. Not every business venture starts with venture capital! There are definately way to start from the roots up. I'm not directly arguing your point, but I am a believer that people who come together with a goal in mind can achieve those results with the right effort and dedication. Should we be more aggressive as a communtiy? Should we instead just let things happen as they will, and praise success brought to us by contracts won by SuSE, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, etc.? The problem I see with relying on Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc. to distribute KDE is that outside of the few paid developers, server space, conference underwriting, etc (and yes, this all is very important and appreciated), KDE is just another set of packages, like Apache, GNOME, and Perl. I suppose I hope for a more synergistic relationship, versus a symbiotic one. Building on your example of having a simpler product to produce solutions with and provide quicker support on, chances are a commercial KDE distributor can produce enhancements and fixes faster and more effectively than the big distros because the desktop is *all they focus on*. Right? As far as Gentoo, yeah, it definately is an excellent project. Their focus is not on deeply enhancing the desktop however. Again, KDE is just another set of provided binaries. They ultimately rely on the changes we make. Perhaps other models can be explored, but I don't see how Ximian is necessarily unique...every company that packages free software, adds value, provides support/training/etc., is doing essentially the same thing. I'm all for examining other avenues, but I think the dialog is healthy for the growth of our community. P.S. - that Quanta fix works great!
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Derek Kite - 2003-06-14
Eric mentioned it, but I want to emphasize the small consultants role here. This is the business model I understand, and like. Ximian, Suse, Redhat etc. are software houses in the old tradition. Package a solution, put it in a box. They have their place, and I think we will see more and more from Suse with support for kde. Their expertise is generally towards a retail product. This perspective is valuable and has brought the desktop to where it is. Consultants focus is on solutions. The german ministry needed a groupware solution, it was put together for them using existing kde technology plus a bunch of new stuff that will be integrated. Another consultant will take that work, extend it further, solve another problem, etc. etc. They don't depend on a package for their income, they depend on fees, 'this much to solve that problem'. I suspect much of the linux server side stuff is produced by and for that market, and probably the desktop will be the same. And it will accelerate as the desktop becomes more and more viable. One thing I know is it takes serious guts to take on a project like that. Some necks are sticking way out. A successful outcome will embolden others to try the same. Derek
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Derek Kite - 2003-06-15
Replying to myself, but there is a commit today from Zack saying that AutomatiX GmbH is funding him to develop Koffice, particularly Kexi, a database type app. Check AutomatiX on google, then translate. They seem to have vertical apps based on QT, and are consultants. Obviously they see value in KDE, and are willing and able to help finish some apps that are lacking. And good for Zack. Eating is somewhat habit forming. Derek
Re: Ximian form of KDE - rathindra das - 2005-09-08
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Re: Ximian form of KDE - Eric Laffoon - 2003-06-15
> That is an interesting perspective. And quite frankly, if I was going to produce such an effort, you would be recruited for PR Assuming you could get me. ;-) I'm extremely independent and don't take direction unless your credentials are so impressive I just want to be in the same room with you. Besides... who says I don't have my own ideas about extending my current efforts? Adding programs we maintain and getting corporate sponsorships and contracts for application development are natural steps for our current position which we have already established a solid ability to perform in. > Still, I'm not sure that the question is necessarily naive. Well, consider that aside from programming I've also worked in marketing, done some consulting and owned a number of businesses in the last 25 years. To my way of thinking anything that isn't a tightly defined pro forma that details not only how it works but how it limits my exposure and keeps me out of the soup line it sort of a ticking time bomb. You should feel okay because my lack of naivety has resulted from being vigorously beat about the head and wallet more than a few times over the years. ;-) > Do you think it has to start on such a large scale as Ximian? Absolutely not. It's just that was your reference so It's difficult to imagine you meant something other than what you referred to. If it's that vague it's very difficult to debate the particulars. My policy is to avoid borrowing money... However my financial planner has told me that even a botched venture capital start on that level could easily leave the recipient set for life with some creative bookkeepping. ;-) > Do you think such a large project such as KDE *can* sustain itself indefinately without some kind of direct commercial backing? Well, let's look. It started in 1996 and over the years there have been a few developers sponsored to work on it and some equipment and hosting services as well as some financial donations. To my knowlege I sponsor one of three full time active developers, at least referencing a comment by David Faure. Currently KDE has the majority of Linux desktops and is highly thought of. I'd say depending on your definition of "direct commercial backing" you could make arguments either way. So far we're going on 7 years with limited support. Clearly as opportunities become more available there are a number of people with the skills to work the model. As Derek pointed out small consultants can make a big difference. Also a solid proposition to commercial entities to contribute to extend F/OSS. The advancement beyond what is already being done, and in my mind shoudl not be overestimated, will be by small shops as it should be. Also KDE established KDE eV and the KDE League for the very reason of promoting KDE. If you've read much of what I've written you know that my plan involves giving web developers as a group of early adopters the incentive to move en masse to KDE because of Quanta. Patience can be a virtue. If anyone has learned that it's me. FWIW I think that so far Ximian seems to be doing okay with a very difficult business model, but over all they run huge risks because any model that can use software for a product can be a liabliity. To me software is a tool, not a product. Software retailers have to make decisions based on retailing their product where as contractors produce software for specific fees, usually for vertical markets but possibly for more general use and to be released free. Anyone who retails packaged software can make a lot of money off of it but they have certain overheads so they can lose it. If they encounter decisions between quality and cash flow you may not like the product. So by definition contracting software must be done on a smaller scale because it is more personal. Any large scale company producing software has to have a means of sustaining it's self. Ximian was fortunate to have millions of dollars that allow it to use a conservative plan where by they can have the bills paid for years before any revenue. Please note also that there is no Linux Kernel Inc. KDE is an exceptional model. even though it has not made any millionaires it's still an excellent and sustainable model. Trust me on that. ;-) > P.S. - that Quanta fix works great! I'm glad to hear that. We are working very hard to make Quanta the best tool anywhere for web development. We're also not planning on stopping there. ;-)
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Maynard - 2003-06-14
Ximian is a very different beast from what you seem to think. Ximian did not make evolution and Red-carpet out of goodwill. They were made to provide a basis for services that Ximian wants to offer. It took them a long time and a lot of work to get where they are now. Ximian is not focussing on the desktop per se, but rather on he enterprise. Without enterprise, they would not have made Evolution or Red-carpet or even started the Mono project. To make such a project succeed, you need more than just KDE. Ximian adds value in a way that is hard to destroy. Look at Mandrake. They are going out of business even though they were the most popular distro. Redhat does NOT make money (or much off it) from selling boxed CD sets. I think the desktop is actually becoming less relevant, rather than what add to it. Ximian is not just packaging GNOME. They are doing a lot more besides that. The desktop is probably just an avenue for providing services which is where they make the money.
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Eron Lloyd - 2003-06-14
I agree. I was a Ximian customer for the first year they were in business. It's easy to see that Evolution and Red Carpet were strategic moves, ones that I applaud. Could KDE not do the same, however? Are people afraid of targeting enterprise customers, and developing pay-for-use services and add-ons? Red Carpet-like upgrading could very well be added to KDE, and Kontact looks to overshadow anything Evolution offers. Time and hard work will definately be necessary. Isn't that what's happening already here? Ximian's focus is on *bringing* the desktop *to* the enterprise. Of course the core desktop is just a commodity, the the powerful framework it provides to develop solutions upon is much more important. Isn't this our goal, too? How are we going to get there? I've seen many great products and ideas never thrive not because they weren't great, but because the right marketing and business decisions weren't made. Just because you build it doesn't mean they will just show up. KDE already is a successful project on it's own. Don't you think significant value can be added to attract enterprise customers to KDE? We've already got our foot in the door. If it wouldn't have been for Active Directory, my whole organization might have been able to move to KDE. Things like KOffice, Kontact, and Kiosk already show great potential for targeting enterprise solutions. Commercial association could catalyze this. Would you rather have GNOME's desktop being the avenue for building viable business solutions? We need a more concrete plan for "konquering the desktop" (since that is why we're doing this, right?)
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Maynard - 2003-06-14
I guess what I am saying is you have to 'forget' how much you like KDE and try to think of why corporations would like KDE instead of Ximian. Ximian control what goes into Ximian Desktop, and therefore offer a product that fits in with their goals. They do not work on stock GNOME so much now so its not so much a question of contrlling GNOME, or controlling KDE for that matter to be able to make a good solution from it. Rather, they add value in their own way to make businesses see them as a viable choice. I do not care which desktop is an avenue for building viable solutions. If it is viable it is good. KDE looks viable, but no one seems to have made an effort to bring it to the enterprise. GNOME has the backing of some of the heaviest hitters behind it, and some of the biggest Linux companies like Redhat and Sun, and I think the cause of this is that they can influence much of the direction that it takes. KDE's independence could actually be one of the reason it might be difficult for big companies to come in. The KDE community understandably does not want companies controlling it. Maybe the community may have to contend with companies exerting more control over the KDE project. They cannot take it away from you, so it should not be a worry. Also do not forget how long it took Ximian to get where they are now. It will not happen easy, but it is possible.
Re: Ximian form of KDE - Datschge - 2003-06-14
SuSE is offering a desktop (not server) distro using KDE for enterprises since this month. This obviously happened due to the demand from their customers who were asking for desktop solutions to work together with their servers. I'm sure the more successful SuSE's desktop offerings are the more they'll improve the desktop basing on the feedback from their customers and contribute the changes back to KDE. SuSE already mentions KDE's existing advantages: "Proven security functions -- the KDE desktop security system, Kiosk, as well as e-mail and file encryption - provide protected availability of all data on local hosts, laptops, and in corporate networks." and "KDE "Desktop Sharing" for remote control of the screens of several network hosts across hardware borders." http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_releases/archive03/sld.html Do we really need a Ximian for something like this? =P
Re: Good change of focus - Anonymous - 2003-06-14
> XD2 looks amazing, the entire desktop is integrated and overall pretty polished. Just look at the desktop trashcan's right mouse button menu: It offers 16 entries in XD2! I fail to see where it's more polished than a vanilla Gnome 2.2. Even a complete KDE 3.1 installation shows less entries, not talking about HEAD with only 3 entries.
Re: Good change of focus - AC - 2003-06-14
Yes, a desktop's trashcan context menu is a great index for its usability.
Re: Good change of focus - Aaron J. Seigo - 2003-06-15
apparently such details are good enough to judge KDE ;-)
Why looking at aged technology? - Ruediger Knoerig - 2003-06-15
Gnome is so far behind KDE (look at nautilus in GNOME 2.x - it looks like and is featured like Konqueror in KDE1.x!)
Re: Why looking at aged technology? - Mike - 2003-06-15
Sorry, i can't seem to find emblems for Konqueror and I also ca't seem to find the zoom feature nautilus has, or cool looking previews and selections. A more usable list view has also escaped me. And so has an integrated cd burning mode and many other things. Fortunately everything I mentioned is already a wish list. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37300 http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58944 http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58943 http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59791
Re: Why looking at aged technology? - cache - 2003-06-15
> And so has an integrated cd burning mode Which absolutely sucks in Nautilus. If you want to do cd burning in a file manager, at least do it right. Wait until linux gets packet writing UDF support. > find the zoom feature nautilus has Konqueror has zooming too. Nautilus just zooms icon and text while Konqueror only zooms icons. > cool looking previews and selections KDE's previews and selections are way better looking than the laggy as hell selection that Nautilus has. Even going a short distance, it lags behind the lag pointer. XP at least implemented this right with no lagging. > i can't seem to find emblems for Konqueror Sorry, but I've really tried to find a use fo emblems in Nautilus, back when I was using GNOME 1.2/1.4, but I couldn't simply find any. Very useless feature.
Re: Why looking at aged technology? - Ruediger Knoerig - 2003-06-16
And if you install k3b (the best CD burning app available for Linux) you have the action "Burn data CD with k3b" in the rmouse context menu. It seems to me that the Gnome guys want to overpaint the lacks of their (if you can call it so) framework by making a lot of noise. Funny, abstruse rules and definitions like the HIG are typical for people which haven't any real thinks left and try to persuade itself that ("the less is more"). With enough definitions of this type you can make the hell a "paradise" (commonly used in "real existent communist" systems). Let'em cry, let us use our good codebase.
THIS looks nice & polished - Ruediger Knoerig - 2003-06-15
Excuse, but Gnome looks weird&ugly compared to this http://www.kde.org/screenshots/kde310shots.php Look at the design possibilities offered in Gnome2.0 - KDE 1.x level! And Nautilus - it seems that they've tried to implement Konqueror - but the KDE1.x version! Whilst KDE has Maintosh-grade beautieness, Gnome2.0 remembers me too much on Win95. And from the technical point of view this comparison gets even better. No thanx, gnomes. We're on our way ahead and can't wait for you.
Forget it hardcore KDE fanboys - Alex - 2003-06-16
you will never aknowledge that the competition has done anything right! Konqueror's zoom isuseless, at least have it implemented right like in nautilus. The previews with shadows, you may consider slow, but I have not noticed a difference and I'm sure KDE developers could implement it faster, in addition nautilus even w th the "slow" previews loads image directories faster than konqueror on my computer anyway. GNOME also actually has a decent theme manager and many of its themes rock, like Ximian Industrial and Redhat Blue Curve or Mandrake Galaxy. art.gnome.org Emblems may be a useless feature to you if your unorganized, but I like to label my stuff to make it stand out. You obviously have not tried to use it fi you really couldn't find a use. It is essential to me. the cd burning in nautilus is indeed simple, but it works, I don't know what you mean.
Calling you out, Alex. - cache - 2003-06-16
> you will never aknowledge that the competition has done anything right! The problem is that people are growing sick and tired of people like you. In every single CVS digest, you post a list of (the same mundane) things that are found in Nautilus but not in Konqueror. Also, you consistantly (in every article) complain about usability and documentation. Not only this, but complain in other websites as well, such as OSNews and kde-look. You do nothing to help whatsoever any of these situations however. Try doing that instead of blindly spouting things about how GNOME rocks. It's like Windows users spouting off how Windows rocks in Mac-only news and discussion forums back in the mid 90's, or Mac users spouting off how Macs rock in PC-only news and dicussion groups. It's ultra-unbeleivably fucking lame. It's understandable if you can't code, but you can always write documentation. The sad thing is that you genuniely do seem to care. However, you do nothing to help. Please try diverting your energy there or else be considerate of others and stop spouting off the same things over and over in every article. Thanks.
Bug reports - Alex - 2003-06-16
I've submitted over 20 bug reports, I think that's doing something. I also feel its important for KDE to have developers know what I think si wrong with KDE so they can fix it. I also think its a good diea to be aware of the competition and where you stand. I remeber an old but very interesting OSNEWS interview with the KDE and Gnome UI/Usability Developers and I found out that almost all of the interviewed people were not at all familiar with OS x and Windows. Without knowing your competition inside and out its very hard to win and many innovations taht your competition has may never appear in your product. Check out the article here: http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2997&page=1 In addition, I don't just complain, I mention specific things that I like in GNOME which i would like to have in KDE when I do make comparrisons. I think my criticism has been generally well received,a list of complaints I had have gotten 90%+ on KDE-LOOK.org. I really don't have the permissions required to write documentation or do any coding, let alone the time. Even though I have spent more and more time learning about KDE, its community etc. lately, and now I am submitting bug reports and wishlists too. http://tinyurl.com/ef3m You don't have to read my posts, and oyu don't have to agree with me, nobody is forcing you to. I do care about KDE, I only criticize it so that it may be improved. The first step to solving a problem is afterall acknowledging it.
Re: Bug reports - Anonymous - 2003-06-16
> I think my criticism has been generally well received,a list of complaints I had have gotten 90%+ on KDE-LOOK.org. Any wish entry titled "KDE Improvement" gets such vote there. And it's still the wrong forum and off-topic there.
Re: Forget it hardcore KDE fanboys - Anonymous - 2003-06-16
> many of its themes rock, like Ximian Industrial and Redhat Blue Curve or Mandrake Galaxy. If you want to say that the default, non-commercial und freely under its name distributable theme sucks, I agree.
Re: Forget it hardcore KDE fanboys - Ruediger Knoerig - 2003-06-16
Nautilus faster than Konqui? WUHAHAHA! Redhat Blue Curve? Is a eye illness compared to Keramik or Aqua. And is there _any_ CD burning app which is so powerful and nicely integrated in the desktop like k3b? Any IDE comparable to gideon? A model for a modular desktop which doesn't looks like Suns RPC's in its early days? And gnome libs? A heap of unstructurized functions (what should you expect from an implementation using the wrong implementation language....). Network transparency? A framework which enhances older programs too? Powerful and easy extensible dialogs&widgets? Here at the TU Berlin Gtk is dead - the courses teaches either Qt or Java/Swing. All in all: die SILENT.
What? - Alex - 2003-06-16
I never said Nautilus was faster, jsut that it appears to load image firectories faster. In addition, i didn't say GNOME's cd burner is better, I think theirs sucks, I just liked the idea of building it into the file manager. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58866 In addition, Anjuta compares to Gideon, but I don't know which is really better. All I'm saying is that GNOME has some cool features too and we should try to have them too. I'm not saying its better overall.
Helping by modifying UI files - Eron Lloyd - 2003-06-14
In thinking of ways to begin contributing, I took a look at Konqui's interface (3.1.2). Sometimes adding polish means the littlest things. I select the "What's this?" item, and randomly click on buttons, fields, etc. Nearly everything produces no result, yet some do. It seems that this could be a good area to get a feel for making contributions to the codebase. After learning Designer, it becomes easy to make modifications to an app without touching the logic code. Therefore, one could go through the KDE code, and improve the UI files, adding tooltips, extended descriptions, etc. After becoming comfortable enough, you could then move on to improve the visual layout of the UI files, tightening their design, making sure they adhere to the style guide (of course, working with the authors). Does this sound like something that would be welcomed? I'd offer to coordinate this, and hopefully begin working. I was inspired by the quick turnaround on the clock UI.
Re: Helping by modifying UI files - Derek Kite - 2003-06-14
There is a fellow, Malcolm Hunter that has gone through all the messages in the codebase fixing minor grammar, spelling, capitalization stuff. Making things consistent. Yes, your contributions would be appreciated. Here's how to go about it. Get the cvs version running on your box. Fix a few things, and send the patch to one of the maintainers, or send to the appropriate list. Start simple. Learn how to submit patches that are easy to apply. Accept suggestions and any feedback. Figure out how the i18n stuff works. Repeat a few times. Build a reputation and get accepted for quality work. Remember, most things aren't complete due to lack of manpower, not because nobody cares. It's not very hard. There are many many little things that need fixing, and mostly need noticing by someone. Derek
Re: Helping by modifying UI files - Aaron J. Seigo - 2003-06-15
i'll echo Derek on this one say that yes, such efforts are VERY much welcome. there are some who are doing such things, such as Malcom Hunter and Frauke, and their work is generally well received. the more the merrier!
Re: Helping by modifying UI files - claes - 2003-06-15
A related comment: is not this "what's this" feature kind of broken in design? The problem I see is that there is no way to know if there actually is any help text to be found without clicking. I would think it would be better if some help symbol ( a question mark?) was shown next to all things that had help text attached to them. Or some other kind of visual indicator...
Re: Helping by modifying UI files - Mike - 2003-06-15
I disagree, the current way is unintrusive and so if you know how to use a feature already it will not bother you or make any special symbols. Usually users just need to look up 1 or 2 things on the itnerface not the whole interface so its not needed to have something like a symbol next to it. If they need to look up the whole interface they need to check the manual. WHAT I DO THINK IS NECESSARY: The what's this symbol should change appearance when over items that have no "what's this" help. For example when I'm borwsing over a slider with no help, the ? would be in a circle with a line over it and when over something with a help item in it it would look normal like it does now. This would save a lot of trouble.
Just submitted a bug report for this. - Alex - 2003-06-15
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59859 Please vote for it if you agree.
The freedesktop HIG - 0x303Jeff - 2003-06-14
It was at http://www.fruitsalad.org/people/lauri/hig/all/... good start, but hasn't seen activity since march.. is there any updated copy?
KWeather - Jan - 2003-06-14
LOL! KWeather always shows a sandstorm in Sydney. That's definitely the coolest bug description I've read in a long time.
Re: KWeather - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-06-14
Ironicly this bug had been in KWeather since mid 1998... now how does a bug live for that long without being detected or fixed? Because it never gets reported. Now, I never had a situation that aggrivated it here, so I never noticed it. The moral of the story is: REPORT YOUR BUGS! The only reason this was fixed was because I was given a bug report and a simple patch. OSS in action :) Cheers -ian reinhart geiser
Re: KWeather - Chakie - 2003-06-17
Often knowing what to report is very, very hard. I have a few bugs in Konqueror-the-web-browser that I know are bugs, but damn if I know how to describe them so that a developer that knows the codebase has a real chance of tracking them down. Reporting "Konqueror crashed while I surfed" doesn't really help anyone.
Re: KWeather - AC - 2003-06-15
Or, how usable does that make KDE in general? This actually is very sad if you ask me. What are you going to tell the users? "LOL that's definitely the coolest bug description I've read in a long time" ..poor users
Re: KWeather - Datschge - 2003-06-16
User who think they can't change anything for sure aren't changing anything. But poor users using KDE can click "Help" and then "Report Bug...". This way they can make many developers happy and eventually themselves happy as well.
Re: KWeather - AC - 2003-06-16
Yes, but it does not make it more *usefull* when such lame bugs are there in the first place.
Re: KWeather - Derek Kite - 2003-06-17
And all code should be bug free. I take it you have gone through all the KWeather sites to check whether the data and display is valid, checked against local conditions, etc.? If you haven't, then get to it. That is the only way to get all the 'lame' bugs out of it. Derek
Blogger? - Hein - 2003-06-14
Would it be possible to include a Blogger-Client and Server in the Kontact project? There is still no Free software blog, although LiveJorunals is open source, so we just have to set up a server...
Re: Blogger? - Tim Jansen - 2003-06-14
Advogato(.org)
Scoop, Postnuke, Slashcode - Mike - 2003-06-14
Are you saying Scoop, http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/ Postnuke, http://www.postnuke.com/ and Slashcode, http://slashcode.com/ aren't free software. Or are you saying they're not blogs?
Re: Scoop, Postnuke, Slashcode - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-06-14
I read it that he wanted a blog client. -ian reinhart geiser
Re: Blogger? - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-06-14
I have this started: http://geiseri.myip.org/~geiseri/pictures/computers/kblog-4.png http://geiseri.myip.org/~geiseri/pictures/computers/kblog-3.png http://geiseri.myip.org/~geiseri/pictures/computers/kblog-2.png http://geiseri.myip.org/~geiseri/pictures/computers/kblog-1.png Its got a few rough edges but works with any Blogger API server. I have tested it only with drupal though. Ideally it could be expanded to work with other blog apis that use XMLRPC. The UI still needs some work, but really the big goal was to just see how hard it would be. FYI using KTextEditInterface, KHTML and KIO it took all of 8hours of coding. Maby KDE 3.3, or 3.2 if someone is REALLY interested. It currently is limited to only a few HTML tags, but it has spell checking, and html preview abilities. Since I use ktexteditinterface, you can also use KVim, QEditor or Kate as the markup editor. Tag autocompletion sorta works, but is limited to the hardcoded tags. Building this into a Kontact plugin should take all of 5 minutes, so if there is interest I can try. I wrote it for my wife to use with a blog she likes and so far no complaints. Cheers -ian reinhart geiser
Re: Blogger? - Datschge - 2003-06-14
Having this as a part of Kontact sounds great to me. Considering the popularity of "blogging" I'm sure it would be very useful and easily accepted among employees within corporate intranets. =)
Re: Blogger? - John Doe - 2003-06-16
Me to!
Re: Blogger? - Luca Beltrame - 2003-06-14
I admit I'd like that, I didn't find any good KDE clients for blogger...
Re: Blogger? - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-06-14
The hardest part was the XMLRPC interface, but since Frerich Raabe and I found a solution arround that, the client becomes trivial. Like I said, if I get enough email interest, (like 30 emails or so) ill commit it, but otherwise I have other more pressing projects that need to get done before 3.2. Also I have had a few people interested in helping maintain it, that also would help get it into CVS faster. The only real missing parts are handlers for different BLOG apis. Since I have a generic C++ <-> XMLRPC mapper, its just a matter of writeing the handlers. Cheers -ian reinhart geiser
Re: Blogger? - Eric Laffoon - 2003-06-15
> Since I use ktexteditinterface, you can also use KVim, QEditor or Kate as the markup editor. Tag autocompletion sorta works, but is limited to the hardcoded tags. What about Quanta? It has complete support for tagging all the dialects of HTML and XHTML as well as the ability to quickly add XML dialects. Besides that it has a WYSIWYG part in development in CVS. ;-)
Re: Blogger? - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-06-15
Well becase quanta is WAAAAAY overkill. That and I could duplicate most of what i need in about 50 lines of code. That and wysiwyg is slow and buggy. That and quanta is not something we can have projects depend on since its a 3rd party app. Throw in the 30second startuptime on my 800Mhz athlon and its a no go. Not to diss quanta, but its much easier to use the standard KDE components and roll my own then to dig into that mess... Quanta is okay for some HTML development, but this is a very limited subset. Im not sure if you have ever blogged before, but most sites only allow about 5 different tags. A step above rich text, but a step below a full HTML editor. Hence the hardcoded tags. I played with my hacked KHTML based editor for a while, but modifying the DOM is just to slow, even from JS. The hard part is that when you update the DOM, especially with tables the cursor can get screwed up. Now I have yet to test this with the latest KJS, but Im really not sold on it. Really the best way is to use QTextEditor and use a special defined stylesheet. Note this is impossible because its not possible to insert custom tags into QTextEditor after its been set into richtext mode. Maby someday when QTextEdit allows access to the internal paragraph, I can go that route but for now KTextEdit is just fine. I can click it arround, but since the only web stuff I do these days is PHP, ive never used quanta. (yes i know quata makes an attempt, but KDevelop just blows it so far away its not funny). Now if you can provide me with a full WYSIWYG editor as a kpart i might take is seriously. Until then I can implement what I need in less than 100 lines of code with KTextEditorInterface and KHTML part. Cheers -ian reinhart geiser
Re: Blogger? - VL User - 2003-06-16
Ouch .. That has to be the worst remark about Quanta I have ever read. Ian?
Re: Blogger? - Datschge - 2003-06-16
I guess Ian just missed Eric's smilie when writing his speech. *shrugs
Re: Blogger? - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2003-06-16
Ummm? What? It was just an objective statement of why it was not an option. I looked at it first, and then discounted it. Quanta has a ton of baggage that it has accumulated over the years that is beyond the scope of what I need. Whats wrong with saying something is not the correct fit? Now if I said Quata blows goats because it doesnt do VBScript, then that would be a troll... But I think everything I have stated above is all fact, maby you dont like it. If not Im sorry to hurt your feelings. Cheers -ian reinhart geiser
Re: Blogger? - VL User - 2003-06-16
This is what did it for me ... > I can click it arround, but since the only web stuff I do these days is PHP, ive never used quanta. (yes i know quata makes an attempt, but KDevelop just blows it so far away its not funny). The rest of your comment was fair regarding using Quanta for blogging, but then you added this gem in there. Anyways, I'm not the one developing Quanta, so my feelings are not the ones to be concerned with :) VL User
OFF TOPIC: WxWindows vs Qt - Alex - 2003-06-16
Yes, I know this isn't the place to get unbiased answers, but such places are only imaginary. Anyway, I have started to learn C++ not too long ago and I don't know which toolkit to choose. They both look very attractive and have about a decade of evolution behind them. WxWindows http://www.wxwindows.org or Qt http://www.trolltech.com When you explain to me why one is better than another please do not mention anything about price, philosophy, or licenses, I only wanta feature comparrison about the PRODUCT itself not the community or anything like that. Also make your comparrisons between the latest stable versions. I asjed the same question on Osnews, but I hav received only one answer at the end http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3794 so i can't really make a decision. Also, of course I will try both, but I still want opinions.
Re: OFF TOPIC: WxWindows vs Qt - Alex - 2003-06-16
Also, is there some kind of "bugs.kde.org" for trolltech's Qt. KDE's bugzilla is wonderful it really helps developers a lot and gives users an easy way to submit bugs or wishes.
Re: OFF TOPIC: WxWindows vs Qt - Anonymous - 2003-06-16
On OSnews it was an off topic comment too? Better read the real stories about it: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/21/2036250&mode=thread