Proposal for app for kdeutils: KConvert

[Andreas Pour]

David Faure wrote:
> 
> On Saturday 13 April 2002 19:43, Andy Fawcett wrote:
> > On Friday 12 April 2002 13:20, George Wright wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I would like to propose an application that I wrote for inclusion in
> > > the KDE utilities package.
> > >
> > > It is a conversion tool for the SI and Imperial units, and is called
> > > KConvert. It is designed for KDE3.
> >
> > When I first saw this app a week ago, I thought it would be well suited
> > to go into the kdeedu module.
> >
> > But after looking at it more, and some discussion on IRC, I think it
> > would be better in kdeutils (as suggested).
> >
> > It's relatively small, so I think the bloat/benefit ratio is pretty
> > irrelevent here.
> 
> One thing to take into account about the "benefits" : I don't see how
> this app benefits non-US non-UK users (except those who travel ;)

Hi,

Because someone in some non-US, non-UK country is reading a US/UK book,
article, etc. and finds in it numbers and units that don't make sense
and would like to convert them ;-) ?

> Just a thought, not an opposition.... but somehow I think there should
> be a limit as to what should go into "KDE itself" and what should be
> available as "3rd-party kde app, from e.g. sourceforge". 

Good point, but I can think of a number of things currently distributed
that fit in this.  How many people need KDevelop?  Or kdeedu?  Or a Palm
pilot synchronizer?

I think the solution to this problem is the oft-repeated one, that the
current KDE default build system should be fixed to eliminate installing
anything other than kdelibs and kdebase as a "package".  It is fine to
include all the utils in kdeutils, for example, but the user should have
a finer control over installing, uninstalling and upgrading than is
offered by the typical "kdeutils.(rpm|deb|tgz)" package.

> Would we say yes
> to importing e.g. an application into KDE which is only useful to one country,
> or to one profession - e.g. medical apps, a library-management app (for librarians) etc.
> Opensource software needs such apps, without doubt, but... in a way
> that only the relevant users grab those apps, whereas KDE is usually
> "distributed as a whole".
> (Yes, I'm extending the debate much beyong the KConvert case ;)

The one big advantage to including an app in a KDE package is that it
gets wider distribution.  By making it trivial for packagers to package
the component apps separately, you get the best of both worlds - those
who need the app will find it on their install CD, those that don't are
not forced to install it.

> Anyway, wasn't there a kunit or such, which supported all conversions done
> by "units", i.e. with a much broader scope?

There is such an app, but I have not compared their features.

Ciao,

Dre