JUN
20
2003

KDE Traffic #55 is Up

Submitted by Juergen

The latest KDE Traffic is up. Coming a bit late, but bringing along news like dropping kmidi, a new infra-red remote control subsystem for KDE, separating KMail's UI from the core, and more. Special guest: a happy user. Grab it at the usual place.

Comments

Strange... no response since 18:03?

By testing why the... at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

The screenshots for kcmlirc have unfortunately disappeared from the web. Anyone have a mirror?

By anon at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

It's pretty short, but it has some cool stuff, like the IR controller project. I've always wanted to use my remote with the tv.

I also am not sure if Kmidi should be dropped, but if a few more months go by and its code isn't updated at all than I think it would have to be dropped.

Its alsoa shame to see Robert leave he did a lot of stuff when he was active. I jsut hope that as our tools improve, umbrello, Kdevelop, kbugbuster, kdiff,qt designer, cervista etc. we willg et a lot more developers.

By Mario- at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

kdevelop, qt designer, cervisia, umbrello, and kompare are all great tools already, imho.

By lit at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

Hello,

I liked the essay on the analogy of the pianist and the coder. I've always felt the same way. Everyone can spell and put words together to make sentences, but that doesn't make everyone a gifted writer. The same is applicable to a coding and many endeavours in life. :-)

It's also good to see the community restructuring, adjusting and updating the user interface component by component. An old proverbial adage says, "Slow and steady wins the race".

Regards,

Mystilleef

By Mystilleef at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

Reminds me of the old tortoise and hare nursery rhyme/children's story..

--Russell

By Russell Miller at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

UI usability HAS to improve. This is the most important issue. Despite of the fact that the distributors are responsible for most of the mess.

For example:

"theme" in Control Center? Looks like a memory of the past.

control center - polite: unsystematic

to many methods to reach a configuration option from the menu. I don't think this is really useful.

every single shell indexed in the menu, beginners are confused, what's the use. Those who want to use a special shell will execute it on other ways either or are able to configure the menu.

"KDE menu" - often messed up, too long desriptions

"Kpaint" - drop this one...

To many editors: Kwrite, Kate, Kedit, Khexedit, Quanta, Kile, ...

- program info: no line wrap on the GPL license tab

It's the small details that make a desktop environment look inmature.

By Gerd at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

> "theme" in Control Center? Looks like a memory of the past.

Agreed. It's afaik directly decended from KDE 1.2. Nobody has really used it since KDE 2.0 at all, I think. If someone were to write a nice set of themes for it, and make the other various appearance/theme/color/style stuff tabs of this kcm, it might actually work well. Of course, other people are working on replacements for this. In fact, they have been since KDE 2.x. I haven't seen a single one that works very well though :(

> control center - polite: unsystematic

Being worked on.

> to many methods to reach a configuration option from the menu. I don't think this is really useful.

> every single shell indexed in the menu, beginners are confused, what's the use. Those who want to use a special shell will execute it on other ways either or are able to configure the menu.

I think this only happens if you run kappfinder.

> "KDE menu" - often messed up, too long desriptions

People used to blame KDE for having too short and archaic k-names in the kmenu (korn..kppp..kate..konqueror..etc..).. now that descriptions have been added by default, people complain about that too.

Perhaps we should just split the kmenu into several buttons like GNOME has. Oh yeah, people blame GNOME for not having a single menu :-)

> "Kpaint" - drop this one...

Agreed. The idea behind kpaint isn't bad, but it just doesn't simply feel like a mature app at all. Even M$ Paint does. Kpaint has had forever to become a mature all (been around since KDE 1.0 or so), but it simply hasn't had anyone interested in developing it further I guess.

> To many editors: Kwrite, Kate, Kedit, Khexedit, Quanta, Kile, ...

Only partially agree here. Kedit and kwrite are virtually the same. Kedit is based on a older text engine. Kwrite is based on kate's text engine. Eventually, kedit should be removed. The major reason it's still around is because kwrite/kate don't support bidirectional text, which is needed for languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.

The other editors are fine imho.. do you really want a mega-editor that's a hex editor (khexedit), a web development app (quanta), a latex IDE (kile), a programmers editor (kate)?

> program info: no line wrap on the GPL license tab

good idea..

By lit at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

I would like to see Kate with a hexmode, instead of KHexEdit. Also the integration of KXMLEditor in Quanta would make sense.

Kate / Quanta / Kile - 3 kinds of editors should be enough.

By Carlo at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

forgot the ;-) behind the last sentence...

By Carlo at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

>> "theme" in Control Center? Looks like a memory of the past.
>
> Agreed. It's afaik directly decended from KDE 1.2. Nobody has really used it
> since KDE 2.0 at all, I think.

I am more than happy to drop it for KDE 3.2.

Cheers,
Waldo Bastian

By Waldo Bastian at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

What is needed to get it dropped for KDE 3.2? Who wil decide on that. Anyway ... I guess it is a bit redundant right now. Please go ahead Waldo :o)

Fab

By Fab at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

I agree the KDE UI needs a lot of work. I filed a long rambling bug report detailing my struggle to use mutt as my default mail client within KDE.

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59490

You can usually see how bad KDE is by going back to use the previous version. I use KDE 3.0 at work on RH8 and 3.1.2 at home, and KDE 3.0 is dreadful in comparison, and I have no doubt that KDE 3.1.2 will seem terrible in comparison with KDE 3.2

By cbcbcb at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

That really does gibe with the point the initial poster was making though: things are improving slowly but surely.

No matter how bad kde may (or may not) be, my personal opinion is it's still light years better than gnome. There are certain apps, such as gschem, that I use that don't really have any kde equivalents - and I HATE it. I'm half tempted to port it to kde just so I don't have to go through that ever again.

--Russell

By Russell Miller at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

> "Kpaint" - drop this one...
I don't agree with you here. I mean just dropping without adding a replacement doesn't make sense. Gimp is no alternative as it is not a paint program and krita is dead. I think that a paint program should definitely be part of KDE. Better having one that is limitted with regard to features than none at all.

By tuxo at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

Yes, we need it!

Maybe it should be made a bit more like mspaint... Just so converters feel a bit more confortable. Kpaint is needed for:
- quick mockups
- small expaining drawings

Dont drop it, but revise it please!

By cies at Mon, 2003/06/23 - 5:00am

Well, Kpaint can be installed by those who want it. Nothing wrong with it.

By Bert at Wed, 2003/06/25 - 5:00am

> To many editors: Kwrite, Kate, Kedit, Khexedit, Quanta, Kile, ...

kvim is the truth!

By Anton Velev at Sun, 2003/06/22 - 5:00am

knano

Sorry, a gentoo user couldn't resist :-)

By Norberto Bensa at Thu, 2003/06/26 - 5:00am

Wonderfull treat :) Inspirational and very true.. I'm also a musician and i've had a similar experience with coding and playing music as well..

I wouldn't mind if you were late again next time ;)

By Pieter Bonne at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

Thanks. Honestly, I was expecting to be flamed, so I'm glad that the respondents so far have appreciated it.

I have been accompanying for the local community theater, and there is about a 20 piece choir. It is quite a rush to make music with that many people, and an experience I wish I could share with everyone here. Alas, I can't. But I have found myself, after performing well a rather difficult piece, shaking and sweating, almost like after sex (of course there are significant differences!). But It's an experience that I really wouldn't trade for anything, and I think that coders can become much better coders by learning how to play an instrument (other than the "skin flute") well.

--Russell

By Russell Miller at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

In response to:

> Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker? (Score:5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 13, @02:34PM (#6193214)

> I am a pianist. I would say that the only advantage that a younger person (read: child) has on an older person as far as pianism goes is that they have a head start.

Seen on the European Veterans Fencing site "Age and treachery will always beat youth and skill".

By Colin Walls at Mon, 2003/06/23 - 5:00am

^^

By Juergen at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

Very nice.

It is nice to see that someone understands fully that there is a lot more to writing a program than knowing a programing language.

--
JRT

By James Richard Tyrer at Sat, 2003/06/21 - 5:00am

To be honest, it's hard for me to comprehend those who don't.

It's like listening to a particularly bad midi file using a bad patch set. You know it's probably pretty technically acurate as far as pitch and duration goes, but it's really ugly to listen to.

--Russell

By Russell Miller at Sun, 2003/06/22 - 5:00am