Kimono Project Nets KDE [April Fools' Day]

Following the success of
the KDE 3.2 release, the KDE project is pleased to announce a new ambitious project dubbed 'Kimono'. The aim
of the project is to write a complete wrapper for KDE/Qt using the Mono framework and is based on early work by KDE bindings hacker extraordinaire Richard Dale. In addition to using Mono for the back-end work, Kimono will entail migrating to KaXul, a fully XML-based representation of the UI. Kimono will be the main focus of the forthcoming KDE 3.3 release.

"We pretty much got things right with 3.2, so it's time to shake things
up a bit," said KDE project leader Matthias Ettrich. "Exploring new frameworks will
help shake the KDE developers out of a rut, and lead to lots of new
ideas."

It's not clear at the moment what the time frame for the Kimono project will be, so don't expect much in the short term. It is likely to slow things down at first, but in the longer term the benefits of using a real object oriented language like C# with the inherent advantages of a managed common runtime will be indisputable.

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Comments

by KDE User (not verified)

I can't help feeling Novell has something to do with this?

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2004-03-31-026-26-NW-DT-NV
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/46148

Some strange things are going on? I am just a user but I am not sure if this is good or bad. I will choose to trust in the KDE developers at the moment and wait and see what happens.

by Richard Dale (not verified)

Is this art? Or is it useful software? Or is it non-useful software trying to make a point?

"A person who is seized by terror will not speak of a 'frisson nouveau' a mere novel thrill, will not shout 'bravo', and will not congratulate the artist upon his originality."

- Eric Auerbach

by Tiago (not verified)

Anyone noticed today is April first? Of course this is a joke!!!!!!!!!!

by ac (not verified)

But is it? It's not here in US. I am looking at the code write now both KaXul and the Mono bindings seem to be real. I am not convinced.

by phoenix (not verified)

Ah, but the best April Fool's jokes are those with just enough truth to make you wonder. :)

by Spy Hunter (not verified)

On the Internet, April fools starts at 00:00 April 1 GMT. KaXUL and the QT C# bindings are both real and have been around for some time now, but the idea that they will be the main focus of any upcoming KDE release is nothing but a joke, of course.

by Richard Dale (not verified)

No, the problem of integrating the KaXul layer with the Mono bindings has been establishing a World Wide network of 'Ontological GUI Metaphysicians'. We've had to do in secret, and what with the recent worldwide concern with people with odd views, I've been reluctant to be too public.

-- Richard

by David (not verified)

Considering recent happenings I doubt whether it is a joke, and all of the above exists and is actually feasible. The date is of course, a bit unfortunate...

by ac (not verified)

This will only make KDE bigger, sslower and bloated!! Even GNOME won't switch to Mono. You have _got_ to kidding me. I am so disappointed. I guess its true what they say about KDE copying Windows. Why did I switch at all. :(

by pete (not verified)

Nobody said that the whole KDE will be coded in C#. All this has nothing to do with Windows, although it would be good to have Qt# cross-platform and forget about Windows.Forms.

by bero (not verified)

Look at the date. It's a joke.

The only truth behind it is that Qt C# bindings do exist (and have existed for months).

by Richard (not verified)

People like you get right on my tits! You're a moron! You clearly know nothing about the internal workings of managed code and the .NET CLR at all.

I'd love to see the whole of KDE written in managed code. The source code would be easy to read, easy to write, and it would be JUST AS QUICK you ignorant prat. And because of all these things it would evolve at a much faster rate and everyone would benefit (including you, you miserable C-loving prick). In fact, the only force holding these things back are the facist Linux gimps (like yourself) who are scared of evolution and want everything to run on their 33MHz 486 because they're too tight arsed to splash out a few hundred quid on a modern machine. If you actually bothered to have a look at .NET, how much it speeds up development, and how much smaller (yes, smaller; MSIL does a lot more per-instruction than x86) it makes your applications then perhaps you'd realise, as I'm sure some of you Linux nerds are starting to do, that Microsoft isn't the source of all evil and that you can actually benefit from embracing some of the technologies that they are partly responsible for creating.

Just to summarise, in case that wasn't clear enough... one day you'll grow out of your "real programmers use assembly language" mindset and make something *useful* in a proper language (C#, Java, VB.NET, etc.).

Richard.

P.S. I bet you're one of those people who spells Microsoft with a dollar sign too.

by PaulSeamons (not verified)

So funny to watch all the fish bite on this one. I bought it for a second until I saw how in depth they were going. Then I glanced at the date.

by Jeff D (not verified)

Rich, could you please qualify your position on this? There have been many, many reasons outlined before as to why we _SHOULDN'T_ be implementing dot-NET. Where are you coming from here?

-jf

by Jeff D (not verified)

DAMN!!!!

foiled by GMT!

by dapawn (not verified)

Had me going at first, but then:
"shake the KDE developers out of a rut"
"using a real object oriented language like C#"
"inherent advantages of a managed common runtime will be indisputable"
made me check the date.

April Fools!

P.S. I love the automatic spellcheck on webforms. You KDE developers rock!

by Rayiner Hashem (not verified)

Its 11:45pm on March 31 here in Atlanta. This interweb thing makes April fool's a very long and drawn out process.

Though, kaxul definitely seems real, and kimono is definitely real. Interesting way to PERVERT THE TRUTH guys!

by truth (not verified)

Kimono isn't real. :P

by SadEagle (not verified)
by ik (not verified)

good, at last a project with a nice code name :)

by Cesar (not verified)

Moreover, there are quite countries where first of April is a normal day.
For example, here at Spain, the equivalent day is 28 of December, which is called "Día de los santos inocentes".

by Mambo-Jumbo (not verified)

Check osnews: Qt# project Speaks of Sabotage
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6550

by manyoso (not verified)

I am Adam Treat the creator and principle developer of the Qt# bindings. There was no sabotage. Marcus is overly sensitive at times.

Richard Dale is one of the original KDE binding authors and responsible for the Qt Java bindings as well as Objective-C, QtC, and KDEC. He is also working on the Ruby bindings, the new Smoke library and the new proxy/smoke based C# bindings. He is doing great work and I look forward to seeing this progression.

Richard and I have talked and he is planning on using the bulk of the current Qt# bindings where applicable.

by Thomas (not verified)

"a real object oriented language like C#" ...yeah... damn... wtf?

Well, I'm really thick-skinned with april fool jokes cause my sisters birthday is today, april 1st, but this one still drove me mad. Well done, guys. :-)

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

We're getting XML in the UI? Finally! Now we can get rid of that darned Designer and stop drawing forms. I can't wait until we finally can use an OO language too. This is really exciting!

Of course this would have looked better if it wasn't still 9:45 PM, March 31st here in Oregon. ;-)

by Amit Upadhyay (not verified)

But dude, "darned" designer is already in XML! If you feel like doing it, go
ahead and start editing that in vi, but most will still find designer a better
way to edit .ui xml files.

Qt also gives you facilities to load XML files dynamically converting them into
user interfaces:
http://www.esrf.fr/computing/bliss/qt/html/designer-manual-5.html#2-3-2

Ofcourse you wont be able to provide custom slot implementations dynamically,
but if that is what you want you would choose QSA:
http://doc.trolltech.com/qsa-1.0/qsa-3.html

--
Amit Upadhyay

by Crouching Tiger (not verified)

Dude, it's a joke. It's April Fools...

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

Another one bites the hook on April 1st. You didn't happen to note that I'm the project leader for Kommander, did you? Kommander is based on Qt Designer and creates the XML .ui files as *.kmdr files that run with kmdr-executor. So Kommander is a no compile, optional scripting language, mini application building dialog tool. It does DCOP too. BTW I'm also the project leader for Quanta Plus which means you're not real likely to find me editing in vi. ;-)

In case it's still not clear. I was kidding.

by Otter (not verified)

Yeah, right. When has Eric Laffoon ever posted anything without inserting a plug for Quanta?

No fooling me today...!

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

No Quanta plug? 23.782% of posts, counting the 68.542% of the time it was on a story about Quanta.

This time however the interesting factor was because of how it relates to Kommander, and son of a gun, all these things are related to the fact that we use KDE tools and technologies, which was the jist of the humor. The Kommander plug came only when it was apparent somebody didn't get the joke. The Quanta plug was done by you when you read it in where it was not. I can only assume it's some kind of obsession you have with Quanta since there was nothing at all about Quanta in it. Thanks for the plug, I guess... It's nice to have something to plug that you don't have to call the plumber for.

Is a little wit too much to ask for on April fools? Try to grasp the joke before countering. Enough of this, I have more entertaining and important things to do. ;-)

by AC (not verified)

This is not an April Fools.. OSNEWS has a story about it at http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6550

APRIL FOOLS!!

by Rayiner Hashem (not verified)

You managed to hoax OSNews :) I tip my hat to you, sir.

by Vevaxel (not verified)

Actually, I think Mono for KDE would be a good thing (assuming there is no problem with copyrights and such things). I would like to program for KDE, but I am currently put off by the complexity of C++. I have done various things in Java (which is a nice language), so going to Mono would probably be fairly easy.

by Haakon Nilsen (not verified)

Exactly. I think there are innumerable people like you (and I). Widespread and standardized mono libraries would lower the threshold to contribute (remember, mono is not only C# -- libraries for it can be used by any mono supported language, so you'd get a number of new language bindings for free).

by Richard Dale (not verified)

In the Kimono C# KDE bindings the method names start with an upper case letter. If I want to use the C# binding as a producer, and a java consumer binding does the CLR have an automagical method renaming scheme?

Am I right in thinking that method name overloading resolution is language specific in the CLR? Here's a problem - C# has unsigned ints, while java has only unsigned. The KDE api features methods overloaded on only that minor type difference.

I think people grossly under estimate the difficulties of producing a common cross-language library without compromises. But that is what we've been attempting to do with Smoke. It doesn't happen by the sprinkling of magic marketing speak 'fairy dust'. Anyone remember CORBA - just wrap an object in language neutral IDL, and bingo! Language independent components..

-- Richard

by David Johnson (not verified)

"Actually, I think Mono for KDE would be a good thing"

The April Fool's joke was funny the first several dozen times. Now it's getting old. If you're not joking, then you obviously don't realize that Ximian (the Mono people) consider Qt to be obsolete.

by Anonymous (not verified)

...and they would be right.

Hi God. :)

by SF (not verified)

Mono is NOT at Microsoft technology, it's just based on a MS technology, to say that MS controls mono would be incorrect, so I don't really see why it shouldn't be implemented.

But, I think you're right about Novell having a hand in this, since Ximian is using C#, and Novell has made QT their standard GUI developing framework, this makes sense.

by Thomas (not verified)

> Mono is NOT a Microsoft technology
wine is not a Microsoft technology
samba is not a Microsoft technology
but it's all about Microsoft "technology"
strange, this is...

by David (not verified)

Well, that is a thin line of perception that we will have to navigate.

by jhohertz (not verified)

Mono itself is not no. However it is based on a Microsoft technology with huge legal questions surrounding it. It is linked to part of Microsoft's .Net C# etc and so Microsoft controls the direction of it and a game of perpetual "catch-up" will ensue. There is just _NO_ way around that. If you think the .Net infastructure is the cats pajamas then you will use Microsoft's implementation as it will be the one that is new and shiny.

What I find incredibly hilarious is that a slew of GNOME folks say Mono is the greatest thing since sliced bread but how is it any different then the failed Harmony project that was deemed to be a waste of time due to perpetual "catch-up" with the latest and greatest Qt? I haven't seen it looked at from this angle and this most likely not the right place to ask it either. But I do find it amusing.

by Haakon Nilsen (not verified)

I swear, if this is an april fools, I will hold a grudge on Richard Moore forever, it's NOT funny! Something like Kimono would be fantastic for KDE, but the "quote" from Ettrich sounds manufactured ("time to shake things up a bit"? right).

Not funny.

by anon (not verified)

The projects are real, however, KDE 3.3 being the focus for kimono isn't.. KDE 3.3 will be a short release before KDE 4.0

by Richard Dale (not verified)

I'm sorry I've been laughing all evening about this news item - it's really surreal. Please don't attack Richard M - I love it!

-- Richard

by Haakon Nilsen (not verified)

Ok, I call off my grudge :) The bindings and tools are indeed real. I'm just a little frustrated with the whole April 1st surrealism; you never know what's real, and something is real but just exaggerated, and who knows what to believe anymore! Come, April 2nd! :)

by Isotopp (not verified)

These started out as April Fools jokes. They became real projects. Fear the worst.

by maX (not verified)

just the title

by Lubos Lunak (not verified)

On a somewhat related note ... http://www.root.cz/clanek/2125 , it's in Czech, but the pictures don't need comments (yes, I got caught too).