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KDE GUI

Corporate KDE 283

Posted by michael from the tired-of-outlook-viruses dept.
roomisigloomis writes "This article at CNET shows some headway being made in KDE development with aims at the corporate desktop. It's cool that it's funded by the German government."
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Corporate KDE More

Corporate KDE

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  • German Government? (Score:4, Funny)

    by PaybackCS ( 611691 ) <payback&pdxlan,com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:22PM (#5197570) Homepage
    This is the same one that ousted M$ some time go, isn't it? I like that government... at least on the outside.
  • is somebody else's socialism. Thank you, People of Germany, for supporting my computer updates with your tax dollers.

  • Make software, not war! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vlad_petric ( 94134 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:26PM (#5197614) Homepage
    Good to know that there are responsible governments who make a lot better use of their taxpayer's money.
  • ahh....scheisse desktop!

  • Yeah, the Germany thing is cool (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Except for the included David Hasselhoff theme.

  • kde (Score:2, Interesting)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 )
    3.1 was very nice. Kplan looks good. But for the love of god could they please drop the name "Kroupware". Its too bad Magellan and what ever that offshoot program was didnt work out the way it was planned. KDE really need evolution. Kplan looks like it might work if only we didnt kmailcool. Yes i know Kmail is mess but why do they expect us to download another app which does the exact same thing?

    • Re:kde (Score:3, Informative)

      by pointwood ( 14018 )

      That name is just the project name, the server is called Kolab and the client has been named Kontact. Unless I've misunderstood something :)


      Kontact is KDE's Evolution. Check the Kontact site [kontact.org] which have more info, including screenshots.


    • > But for the love of god could they please drop the name "Kroupware".

      Pretty much it's already been dropped. Unfortunately, all the previous reports about it have been with the name "kroupware", so I expect cnet got it from there. The server's name is kollab.

      > Yes i know Kmail is mess but why do they expect us to download another app which does the exact same thing?

      kmailcool (and kroupware additions) will eventually be merged into the main kmail branch. in fact, bits and pieces have already been done.

  • Reposted from dot.kde.org (Score:5, Informative)

    by manyoso ( 260664 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:33PM (#5197695) Homepage
    Ingo Klöcker says,

    Hi everybody!

    The C|Net article claims that "the first elements [of Kroupware] have appeared in the new KDE 3.1"[1]. That's (unfortunately) wrong. As you can check yourself cvs was "frozen for feature commits that are not listed in the planned-feature document"[2] on July 1, 2002 while the Kroupware "project began in September."[1]. So it wasn't possible to include anything from the Kroupware project in KDE 3.1.

    In particular the article claims:
    "Two elements of the client work are in the new KDE 3.1, released Tuesday: the KMail software can handle encrypted e-mail attachments, and the KOrganizer calendar software can communicate with Exchange 2000 servers."

    Both elements are not part of the Kroupware project.
    The KMail improvements, i.e. support for PGP/MIME (RFC 3156) and S/MIME, were made by the Ägypten project[3] (which incidentally also was ordered by Germany's agency for information technology security).
    The KOrganizer plugin[4] for connections to Microsoft Exchange 2000® servers was written by Jan-Pascal van Best completely independant of the Kroupware project.

    Anyway, you can all look forward to KDE 3.2 which will include most (if not all) of the client side elements of the Kroupware project.

    Regards,
    Ingo

    [1] http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982816.html
    [2] http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 3.1-release-plan.html
    [3] http://www.gnupg.org/aegypten/index.html
    [4] http://korganizer.kde.org/workshops/ExchangePlugin /en/html/index.html

  • Germany should be Kermany (Score:5, Funny)

    by StarTux ( 230379 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:33PM (#5197696) Journal
    Time for a name change, I propose Germany be renamed to Kermany :).

    Must send e-mail to the Kerman Kovernment.
    StarTux

  • aethera (Score:5, Informative)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <aaaaaNO@SPAMSPAM.yahoo.com> on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:33PM (#5197699) Journal
    heh they forgot aetherea [thekompany.com]
    which looks like a nice outlook clone

  • Interesting (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmm, seems very interesting, even though I didn't read the article.

  • KDE IS coming along (Score:5, Insightful)

    by purplebear ( 229854 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:34PM (#5197708)
    I have tried 3.1 betas and release candidates, and I'd say it's definitely coming along as far as desktop usability. I've been using it as my primary desktop at home for a couple years now.
    But, with 3.1, it has been an easy switch to convert my entire household to it. This conversion includes my barely computer literate wife, my 7 year old son and 3.5 year old daughter.
    The Kroupware project is what will make it ultimately challenging to MS to compete. Replacing Exchange is the turning point for most corporate uses.

  • kde with gnome (Score:2, Interesting)

    by asv108 ( 141455 )
    I love the kde enviroment, I was finally able to get 3.1 to compile yesterday and I was very impressed. I use KDE as my window enviroment, but almost all my apps are gtk. With the notable exceptions of konq, konsole and koncd, all my other most used apps use gtk: evolution, gaim, eclipse. I would imagine that this is the norm for most KDE users. Why bother reinventing the wheel?

    • Re:kde with gnome (Score:2, Interesting)

      by purplebear ( 229854 )
      I think I would consider myself an average KDE user. Most of my apps are KDE. The one thing I don't understand is those who push using GTK apps in KDE. Why reinvent the wheel? Because these wheels look and feel much better. GTK apps are some of the ugliest I have ever seen. Sure, a few, very few, seem to have all the features I may want in an app, but they look horrible, especially intermixed in a KDE desktop.
      So, let's see:
      evolution - absolutely hate it, kmail (particularly kmailcool) is so much better.
      gaim - nice app, but I like kopete better. Heck, I even prefer Psi to it. Just for the integrated look, if nothing else.
      Matter of fact, about the only non-KDE app I use on the desktop regularly is XMMS. Haven't tried it out yet, but if they remembered to remove that last lingering debug element from Noatun, I'll be using it from now on as well.
      I'm sure gnome and gtk are great for some, but I can't stand the immature look and feel of them.
      • You might want to try out Kiwi. :)

        Check http://c133.org/kiwi-0.2.tar.bz2 for a preview of what we're working on (Shamyl Zakariya and I are working on this one... we're both doing some improvements that aren't released yet, and we know there are a few bugs, but it's somewhat usable already)

        -Chris
    • Why not? I use Mandrake, and everything it KDE-centric. I rarely if ever use gtk apps (apart from my brief daliance with Gnome 2.2... very pretty, but the presence of gtk1.2 apps messed it up). It's just personal preference.
    • Two reasons:

      1. Because evolution,gaim,eclipse are not native KDE applications. This means they differ in subtle (but important to some) ways from other integrated KDE applications. One of the great strengths of KDE is the uniform set of application UI's. Even GNOME is trying to make a consistent set of application UI's by adopting clear standards. One way KDE implements uniform UI standards is with the actual API interfaces. This makes for a consistent look and feel across KDE applications with minimal effort on the part of the programmer.

      2. The Kroupware is creating a new server for PIM applications called Kolab. AFAIK, this has no counterpart in evolution.
      • 2. The Kroupware is creating a new server for PIM applications called Kolab. AFAIK, this has no counterpart in evolution.

        It is also not tied to KDE specifically; you can use evolution just as easily as Kmail et al. (or outlook for that matter).

    • Why bother reinventing the wheel?

      Competition bracketed by standards. There are some posts saying that eurgh all gtk apps suck. Personally I think peoples attitudes will change once GTK2 apps become the norm (my desktop is mostly gtk2 but it's also mostly development software).

      Anyway, users shouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. Redhat started it with BlueCurve, now there is also Geramik, it can only go forward. So, now there is unified icon themes, soon you'll have to look carefully to tell which widget engine an app is using if you use a unified theme.

      Really what's next is for Qt and GTK to get standardised theming plugins, so a theme can be written once and then used for both Qt and GTK, but I dunno if that'll happen anytime soon.

    • Re:kde with gnome (Score:5, Informative)

      by ChrisWong ( 17493 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:05PM (#5197962) Homepage
      If you've never used a fully integrated GUI environment, it will be hard to appreciate what KDE is trying to accomplish on the desktop.

      KDE's strength is in the integration. KDE is not about being yet another window manager, but was meant as a holistic answer to the desktop problem. A KDE desktop is meant to be a collection of integrated applications with predictable, uniform behavior. You will see the same file dialog (with URLs and bookmarks), print dialog, toolbar editor, font chooser, color picker, help infrastructure, address book, and predictable cut and paste. Sharing of components means familiar behavior throughout, such as the file manager embedded in the file open dialog or the image viewer embedded in the file manager. When you open a file, the dialog remembers the bookmarks and frequently used directories you used in other KDE apps. In other words, the KDE experience provides a uniformity, familiarity and predictability that goes well beyond mere theming or toolkits. This is good for beginners.

      What you get when you mix apps is the usual jumble of X apps doing their own thing in their own way. Apps do not remember your favorite colors, your print settings, your favorite directories. It's the familiar X desktop: a Frankenstein collection of apps not quite fitting together. Red Hat 8's superficial skinning does nothing about this. "KDE" is reduced to being an oversized, slow window manager: nothing more. It is not really KDE. Why would anyone want to use that?

      I'm under no delusion that KDE is quite there yet. But some day, the major KDE apps will be merely good enough for everyday use. If they are merely adequate, the overall integration will offer a major advantage over non-KDE apps that can put them over the top for all practical purposes.

      • Re:kde with gnome (Score:3, Insightful)

        by manyoso ( 260664 )
        Very well put. This is the true shining star of the KDE project. I find it funny that RedHat would relegate KDE to a regular window manager when the RedHat developers are very involved with the GNOME usability standards which emphasize the benefits of all desktop applications working and feeling the same way.
      • KDE's strength is in the integration. KDE is not about being yet another window manager, but was meant as a holistic answer to the desktop problem. A KDE desktop is meant to be a collection of integrated applications with predictable, uniform behavior.

        Personally, if I thought that was the best way, I'd get a Mac. My impression is that the iEverything apps to that much better, and with their control over code, APIs and hardware they got a lot more control than KDE ever can have.

        I mix and match software from a bunch of different companies here on my Windows desktop, I hardly think it'd be any other on Linux (used as server atm). Of course having some common controls and all is good, but I hardly think the KDE group is best at writing *every* desktop software out there. Then again, if they can offer a superior platform and guidelines to build programs on, other programs should follow.

        Kjella
        • I think that you probably aren't understanding things here. (I'm not either totally.)

          Remember that KDE isn't the pieces that work with it. KMail is a KDE mail client. There's nothing stopping someone from writing another one. (I know of a couple of KDE editors, e.g., though I suppose that KWrite could be a part of Kate.)

          Think of KDE as the implementation of a bunch of APIs that your program can hook into. That's a part of what's going on. So you want an editing pane that does syntax coloring of program text and automatically recognizes Perl, Python, and HTML... so you call the application that someone has already written that does just that. This means that you don't need to write that part. It also means that it acts the same way that it would when it was called from the other places that used it.

          Well, that's just the image I got. Could be wrong, as I haven't checked into the code. But if you have a better idea for how some piece could be implemented, write it, and try to convince people that your way is enough better to use it. ... This is a difficult sell, but people do it several times every year. Perhaps the best way is to create an application or so that uses your method, so people can see how it works.

          P.S.: I think that Gnome is doing the same thing. No big surprise here, as good ideas tend to migrate from project to project. (I don't even know who had it first... I seem to remember seeing something about bonobo a couple of years ago that seemed to be this kind of thing coming up.)

          P.P.S.: Yes, the Mac does this too. So does windows. But in the Open Source community the techniques for implementation migrate rather than being locked away.
    • Then you should wait until 3.2, and then try Kontact (instead of Evolution) and Kopete (to replace gaim). There is currently nothing comparable to Eclipse, but maybe someone ports Eclipe's toolkit to Qt/KDE.
    • > Why bother reinventing the wheel?

      What's the equivalent to this project in gtk? The closest thing I can think of is Evolution, but it doesn't offer a server.

  • Sneaky Germans... (Score:4, Funny)

    by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@@@jaquith...org> on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:36PM (#5197730) Homepage Journal
    KDE...Kraut Desktop Environment?

    -Waldo Jaquith
  • yes, i LOVE things that are funded by the german government...

  • Very nice... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MattCohn.com ( 555899 )
    Looks very nice, but I'm sure that the comments are going to be flooded with comments claiming that KDE is only trying to be more like Windows. However, what people fail to see is that Linux isn't trying to replace the desktop metaphore, the conventional UI. What I've thought of Linux to be is an open, reliable, stable Windows. One created by anyone with the skill and time, for anyone. Started on the server, it didn't need big buttons and pretty colors. However now that it is being developed for everyone, the way KDE is developing just showes that it's moving in the right direction. Towards an open, stable Windows.

  • Open source + government interest = ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vano2001 ( 617789 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:37PM (#5197745)
    Does anyone else see the possibility that major OSS and specially the Linux OS will end up being managed (or controlled big time) by governments? The level of funding a government can have surpasses that of copmanies or donations. Will this have any impact on the direction development will take? Can this have any negative impact on the long run? (of course it is all advantage for the forseeable future)
    • I guess it is possible that a good chunk of development dollars could go into these projects, but I am not sure what kind of bad things you could expect to come out of this. If the software is covered by a GPL-type license, than it doesn't really matter who is directing development in one way or another, as eventually those things that are determined to be generally good will probably stick around in a few peoples distributions or software projects.

      Besides, the direction that government takes software development into will probably be good from a human standpoint, as a lot of these countries point to open document standards and the like, such that poublic documents will be readible for a long time to come. This can only be a good thing.

    • You are so mistaken as to be beyond belief. Please read first before posting.

      In this case the project isn't "being managed or controlled" by the govt. From the FAQ posted in the Kroupware web site.

      "1.3. Is the German government sponsoring/supporting the project?
      To be very precise the project is _not_ "funded", "supported" or "sponsored" by the German Government. This would missrepresent that fact that the Kroupware project is a regular commercial business contract after we've won the tender to deliver a solution for the groupware needs of the BSI (compare answer 1.1). The participating companies organise the open development of this Free Software aiming to create the best technical result for the BSI regarding the contract."

      It's being developed by commercial companies who won a contract with the govt. In this case the govt and the companies don't mind releasing the resultant product under the GPL.

      Win-Win-Win for everybody (except MS of course). The govt gets what they want, the development is done in the commercial sector, the consumers benefit by having access to high quality software.

    • If there was like one government to influence it, I might worry. But all countries have an interest in not letting *any other* countries have control over the OS. In case you haven't noticed, several countries around the world have rattled their sables over not having the source to Windows. Of course it would influence the development, but it's not like old features and tools would disappear. Unlike some Windows programs I miss, that were simply discontinued and won't work under newer Windows versions. With Linux I'd at least have a chance to make it work under new versions...

      Kjella

  • Nice!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rppp01 ( 236599 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:37PM (#5197747) Homepage
    the KMail software can handle encrypted e-mail attachments, and the KOrganizer calendar software can communicate with Exchange 2000 servers.

    This is huge. At least for corporations that use Exchange (and not Lotus or something similiar). I've been waiting anxiously for these products to appear. I always thought the exchange-outlook component was the hardest one to break for the linux/alternative workstation OS.
    I don't use KDE, so let me ask: are Korganizer and Kmail integrated so they can work together- within a same interface? Like that of Outlook?
    Also...doesn't Evolution have these capabilities. I remember once reading that it would. I do use Evolution, but our company does not use Outlook, so I cannot test this.

    • Re:Nice!! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by vano2001 ( 617789 )
      It would be great for the Ximian people to incorporate the Exchange-compatibility KOrganizer has with that of Evolution. And why not.. it would also be a good idea for someone to make the Exchange-calendar backend for linux also (tie it with IMAP I guess.) I know it probably is not a standard (or an MS one at that) but having an organizer-calendar work in the same way as your IMAP email is really great. (I do miss this functionality say in Evolution when using IMAP. My calendar data is not kept in the IMAP server.)
    • the KMail software can handle encrypted e-mail attachments, and the KOrganizer calendar software can communicate with Exchange 2000 servers.

      This is huge.

      Yeah, really. This will go a long way towards convincing by boss to switch a few workstatioins over to linux. I wanted to put linux on the server (nice dell poweredge system), but since they already spent so much on windows 2000 server + exchange 2000 + office 2000, she didn't want to abandon all that software. Wish I was here before they bought all this.

      So, if I put linux on a couple of workstations, people will realise that it isn't so scary, and that will go a long way to getting more people to use it. If all goes well I may be able to convert the entire office to linux (I hope).

    • Re:Nice!! (Score:2, Informative)

      by jjc2222 ( 100453 )
      I don't use KDE, so let me ask: are Korganizer and Kmail integrated so they can work together- within a same interface? Like that of Outlook?


      There is a project called Kontact [kontact.org] that is integrating the user interfaces of the various personal information management tools of KDE (KAddressBook, KMail, KOrganizer, etc.). It is scheduled for official release with KDE 3.2, but they have a release available now!

  • Don't trust 'em.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:41PM (#5197773) Homepage Journal

    Don't trust the Germans, they make potato cannons.

  • Could run afoul of US Laws (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:44PM (#5197795)
    People need to be careful here since US trade laws
    could be used by MS against Linux with KDE since the product could be claimed to be Govt. subsidized.

    There were some reports earlier that MS did exactly
    this to put a stop to the NSA adding strong
    security features to Linux.
    • It is not, since it was contract work. It had to be release since it extended GPL'd software.
    • Nice, well rounded troll. I'm shocked you got so much attention. You're really pushing the envelope.

      MS's arguments with the NSA had nothing to do with the status of the IP after the NSA invested in it, but rather whether or not the NSA should be involved.

      Of course, this is the government of a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT COUNTRY, and trade laws had nothing whatsoever to do with their original argument. Somehow, however, due to the brilliance of your troll, you'll probably even get people to start explaining how the GPL and/or the US Constitution works. Bravo.
  • Mm. I'm liking the sound of this "kiosk mode" that can disallow users of a public terminal to change settings. You wouldn't believe how often I hear someone in the university [ulst.ac.uk] library complain that their browser has no "back" button because someone's gone and switched it off. Twelve million pounds (almost $20million) on a new library full of free-use machines, and they're all running Win98 *cringe*

    KDE still can't get the Desktop menu right, though. *grins*

  • Very nice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:45PM (#5197804) Homepage
    And don't forget that the important part - the server stuff - is of course desktop agnostic; you run kmail or evolution or whatever client you want (including outlook for windows holdouts) that supports the relevant protocols.

    That is really the big part of this story; clients we have already, and others are coming along, but a free server for the small to medium organization has been sorely lacking. Let's just hope the devels realize this fully and do not do something silly like tie the server to just the KDE client stuff, or require X and KDE on the server for management.
    • read the FAQ, looks like you'll be able to run about any IMAP client for basic email stuff, but you're going to need the KDE client or the Insight connector for Outlook. oh well, still cheaper than exchange licensing.

      too bad that no one else is working on an opensource server like HP OpenMail/Samsung Contact.

  • Kreat :( (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by halftrack ( 454203 )
    kJetz kÖnnen kWir kEin K kIn kAlles kWörten kPlassieren.

    kExcuse kMy kGerman.

  • The KDE-Germany Connection (Score:5, Informative)

    by Amadablam ( 516748 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @02:54PM (#5197871)
    For a little insight on the KDE-Germany connection, here's a snippet from http://ktown.kde.org/~nolden/kde/README, a readme by Ralf Nolden, one of the people responsible for building KDE for debian:

    The main reason to set up this repository is, amongst others, that I'm working at credativ GmbH, located in Juelich, Germany since September 2002. We are contracted to set up KDE 3.1 together with the Aegypten project (http://www.gnupg.org/aegypten/) on Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (woody) by the BSI (Bundesamt fuer Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik), the german governmental agency for security in IT-technology. The Aegypten project itself is a development effort contracted by the BSI to enable governmental authorities to use S/MIME certifications for email communications with KMail and Mutt as email clients. The graphical user interface for Desktop use is the primary goal behind the project. The same is valid for the Kroupware (http://www.kroupware.org) project, wich implements a groupware solution for KDE with two components, the kolab server as the group-ware server component and KMail, KAddressbook and KOrganizer as client-side components. The Kroupware project is currently under development by the according companies and will be merged into KDE 3.2.

  • An excellent tutorial on the KDE kiosk framework (Score:4, Informative)

    by manyoso ( 260664 ) on Friday January 31, 2003 @03:08PM (#5197987) Homepage
    Another excellent article that includes a tutorial on the new KDE kiosk framework:

    http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-11/kde_01.html
  • It's great, (took a while to download and install on a clean Gentoo system though).

    My only gripes are,
    The media players (based on xine) don't seem to work properly, so I use xine.

    Ahhhh those horrible buttons and icons , the KDE team should have picked a cleaner default configuration, colours, buttons and window decoration.

    I've had a couple of quirky tab issues, but nothing too bad.

    No Image editor, I use kio slaves to directly access images from my digital camera, this only works in KDE, so I have to retrieve images from my camera to edit them.

    Umm... that's about it.
    Quick, come with more apps than I could throw a corporate developer at.

    • Re:KDE 3.1 (Score:2, Informative)

      by markatwork ( 132554 )
      If you are running the gentoo build of KDE3.1 there is a good reason why the media player(s) don't work. There currently is no updated version of the Xinelibs in portage which is required by KDE3.1 Therefor it has been disabled. (See the ebuild file, or forums.gentoo.org for more info.) I was kinda bummed about this, but look forward to when I can try this functionality out.
    • The only serious downer I've noticed is an interface issue with the new Konqueror. It has tabbed browsing now - great! Trouble is, where Galeon has an 'x' button on each tab and Mozilla has an 'x' to close the current tab on the far right, Konqueror requires a right-click and 'close tab'. Yeah, there's Ctrl-W keyboard shortcut, but I tend to think in terms of the mouse for window manipulation.

      Oh, and the Ctrl-T combination for opening a new tab, that's the same in every other browser I ever saw, opens up a Konsole. Ctrl-Shift-N opens a tab. That's only a minor bother, though...

      • The tab closing button is a wishlst item that's already closed. Just didn't make it into 3.1.
      • Both gripes can be remedied:
        1. Go to Settings->Configure Toolbars
          Add the close current tab to the main toolbar, I put it behind the stop button.
        2. Go to Settings-> Configure Shortcuts
          Change the shortcut for Open Terminal and Open new Tab to your liking.
        This is configurable, you know?
  • I'm tired of this "all consistent, all integrated" desktop madness. We have Mozilla for web browsing, e-mail, and calendaring. We have OpenOffice for MS Office-like uses. Maybe we need something that works a little more like Outlook than Mozilla does right now. Pick a good window manager, some small utilities, and you have a decent desktop.

    I think efforts like Gnome and KDE that try to put in place a gigantic, sluggish infrastructure and try to force everything to use the same libraries are largely a waste of time and effort. Not even Microsoft or Apple are that consistent.

    • Re:tired of desktops (Score:3, Informative)

      by Roberto ( 1777 )
      Of course, what you say would make a modicum of sense if KDE (or GNOME) had the goal of "put[ting] in place a gigantic, sluggish infrastructure and try to force everything to use the same libraries".

      Since they don't, your comment is basically handwaving.

      The goal of these desktops is to provide the infrastructure needed to make application development simpler, nicer.

      For example: Suppose Quanta was not a KDE application. Now imagine a webmaster wants to use Quanta to edit pages on a website.

      Since that is a very necessary feature, Quanta would have to implement some sort of ftp client. And perhaps also a scp/sftp client, a webdav client, and so on for every mechanism it wanted to support.

      But... luckily Quanta *is* a KDE app. So, it got all that for free. And if tomorrow someone writes a mechanism to access any other remote site, Quanta will get it too.

      Mind you, that is only one example of many, showing how infrastructure is sorely needed. Lack of it leads to poor applications.
      • Of course, what you say would make a modicum of sense if KDE (or GNOME) had the goal of "put[ting] in place a gigantic, sluggish infrastructure and try to force everything to use the same libraries". Since they don't, your comment is basically handwaving.

        But they do: they have their own standards and software infrastructure for inter-client communication, audio, and a lot of other features.

        For example: Suppose Quanta was not a KDE application. Now imagine a webmaster wants to use Quanta to edit pages on a website. Since that is a very necessary feature, Quanta would have to implement some sort of ftp client. And perhaps also a scp/sftp client, a webdav client, and so on for every mechanism it wanted to support. But... luckily Quanta *is* a KDE app. So, it got all that for free. And if tomorrow someone writes a mechanism to access any other remote site, Quanta will get it too.

        There is nothing wrong with reusing software. But we already have libraries for dealing with FTP, SSH, WebDav, and all those other protocols.

        The errors of KDE (and Gnome, for that matter) are that they are reinventing the wheel and picking a single winner. Rather than for the best FTP library to win through the choice of application developers, KDE's philosophy is that you use the KDE library. And if my application doesn't use the KDE library, then it won't integrate well with all the other KDE apps that do. And if you use one KDE library, probably you have to use more and more, and KDE servers, and lots of other stuff, since it's all interlinked and interdependent.

        KDE commits the same error as the Soviets: the problem of designing useful parts for a free market of ideas and components is so daunting that they instead fall back on central planning and central specifications. And the result is just like the Soviet Union as well: initially, a slick and consistent machinery, but it is already getting stale and it will sooner or later collapse under its own weight.


        • There is nothing wrong with reusing software. But we already have libraries for dealing with FTP, SSH, WebDav, and all those other protocols.


          I am not aware of a set of libraries that would support nearly as many protocols as the kioslaves with the same API. Pray, Mr. Troll, where would I find those miraculous libraries?

          Do you know that the kioslaves are often mostly WRAPPERS? audiocd:// uses cdparanoia, smb:// uses libsmb, floppy:// uses the mtools, https:// usses openssl.

          Tell us how you would provide a single API to all these different libs?

          • I am not aware of a set of libraries that would support nearly as many protocols as the kioslaves with the same API.

            Come on, pay at least a little attention. I'm not disputing the utility of the individual components that KDE provides. Quite to the contrary: I think the functionality that KDE components provide is extremely useful. All the worse that KDE is taking the approach of creating an integrated, consistent, interdependent set of libraries and software components that reuse each other. While those adjectives doubtlessly sound good to you, what they mean is that nobody is using kioslaves with other environments.

            Lots of systems have taken KDE's all-or-nothing design approach over the last 30 years. It's great in the short run: it's really easy to do, and everything works together oh-so-nicely. But most of the time, the "all-or-nothing" turns into "nothing", and then no software components survive.

            Pray, Mr. Troll, where would I find those miraculous libraries?

            Circle the wagons! KDE is under attack! Retaliate with insults! Just don't bother trying to understand what someone is saying. Great going. And so typical.

        • You obviously dont understand what KDE brings, therefore it is not surprising you deem it unworthy.

          Sure, there are ftp libs and webdav libs.

          But if Quanta was to use both, then Quanta would have to provide a UI for ftp, and a UI for webdav, and glue ode to link the UI to each library.

          By using KDEs ioslaves, Quanta doesnt have to do nothing. Burcause the kioslaves produce a higuer level API, which abstracts the details of the mechanism.

          Now, Quanta COULD write such a higher level API, but wouldnt that be just recreating kioslaves, only for each app? That makes no sense.

          At a lower level, kioslaves use those libraries you mention, if necessary. So the code reuse at that level is also done.

          And yes, if you dont use the KDE APIs, you dont integrate with KDE: And if KDE didnt provide APIs, then you dont integrate with KDE either, so what is the problem?
          • You obviously dont understand what KDE brings, therefore it is not surprising you deem it unworthy.

            Oh, I understand exactly what it brings: tons of really useful functionality, but I can only get most of it if I subscribe to the whole KDE master plan.

            Now, Quanta COULD write such a higher level API, but wouldnt that be just recreating kioslaves, only for each app? That makes no sense.

            Indeed, it wouldn't. But it also doesn't make sense to invest lots of time in something like kioslaves if it is only going to be useful for building KDE apps. What would make sense would be to create a library like kioslaves that would be used with lots of toolkits: wxWindows, FLTK, Gtk+, etc.

            The KDE (and, to much the same degree, Gnome) attitude is: f*ck the rest of the universe, we are just going to live in our own little world and tinker with out intricate web of libraries. And then we are going to take over the world because we are a little better than everybody else. That's Windows thinking. That's mainframe thinking. It sucks. It's exactly what UNIX was created in reaction against.

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