Looking for feedback on Gnome/KDE article

[Vadim Plessky]

Matthias:
Thanks a lot for the link. Hopefully, KDE developers & users would be able to 
post thier comemnts, as previous artiucle looks like too much 
GNOME/RedHat-specific.

Frankly, there is a difference between what subject says (Looking for feedback 
on Gnome/KDE article) and article itself 
( "Hooray for Bluecurve", http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6476)
Since what time BlueCurve became synonym for GNOME?

BlueCurve is Window Decoration/Widget Theme (Engine), and installing it 
(instead of default) one is just one part of Desktop Customization process. 
[I posted this as a comment to the article few minutes ago]

Supposing that Marco Fioretti is indeed interested in "what could be improved 
in the current efforts for a Free U*nix Desktop", I'd like to note that there 
are on-going standartization efforts, check <xdg-list at freedesktop.org> 
mailing list for details.
Those efforts are not limited to GNOME/KDE, but other interested parts of 
Linux community are participating, too (ROX project).

I also believe that a lot of work which would help Linux (UNIX) Desktop to 
succeed has to be done at XFree86 (not KDE or GNOME, not GTK or QT) level.
There are new & important technologies which are now in XFree86 CVS (XF-4.3.0 
branch), like RandR extension, updated/enhanced RENDER ext., there is an 
on-going work on Xr/Xc extensions (which would provide SVG-like, 
PostScript-like drawing API, in kind of higher-level library than Xrender 
itself). Besides, there are new Xcursors, and those new mouse 
curosrs/pointers look like very cool (I am on XFree86 CVS now so can test 
those)

I'd like also to comment on those parts of your artcile:
* Making the cut-and-paste option always work between windows. 
VP: it works, and it works very nice, since a long time
It's know that Mozilal was broken for some time with its cut'n'paste support, 
but AFAIK it works even with Mozilla now, no?..

* System-wide Unicode, instead of n different solutions for the Euro symbol. 
VP:  Unicoide is supported in KDE already for sometime.
You can print fro, say, KWord or Konqueror in quite exotic languages, and text 
in thos elanguages can be easily mixed.
Are you concerned with  missing Unicode support in some othe rprojects? Well, 
you can't demand from authors of Open-Source projects *what* they should 
implement and *how*.
Obviously, there are several reasons why those people use/selected some 
solutions.
I'd like to hear, though, why there is no keyboard switcher in GNOME.
In its current state, GNOME2 is useless for Cyrillic-based language (like my 
native, Russian)

* One standard, centralized, font management system, for both display and 
printing. 
VP:  it's called FontConfig.
KDE 3.1/Qt-3.1 use FontConfig.

* A method for easy definition of the same hot keys across different 
applications. 
-->  what application do you speak about?

* Documentation written for end users, not people debugging a program. 
VP: this is very valid point, but it's more concern for *distributors*, not 
for developers or advanced users.
It's fine with me to write detailed documentation for, say, Konqueror.
But:  how you can explain to user, say, instalation procedures for Flash 
plugin, if user doesn't know what Flash is? :-)
(do you see my point?)
KDE developers do not know, from the beginning, *what* experience each KDE 
user has.
There are, obviously, more serious problems out there (like: missing binary 
KDE packages for RedHat; open bugs at bugs.kde.org; making KDE/KOffice 
usefull for penetration to Corporate Desktop) which should be fixed *before* 
thinking about documentation for novice users.
Don't get me wrong: documentation *is* important.  But it's not priority for 
majority of current users. KDE is very user-friendly, and many people who 
have very little computer expereince feel theirself quite comfortable in KDE.
I know this, as they use my KDE Desktop from time to time, and I haven't heard 
from them any complaigns. :-)

Best Regards,

Vadim Plessky

On Thursday 12 December 2002 5:51 pm, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer wrote:
|  ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
|
|  Subject: Looking for feedback on Gnome/KDE article
|  Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 15:42:12 +0100
|  From: "Marco Fioretti" <m.fioretti at inwind.it>
|  To: "kalle" <kalle at kde.org>
|  Cc: "m.fioretti" <m.fioretti at inwind.it>
|
|  Hello,
|
|  I am putting together a followup to this article:
|
|  http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6476
|
|  The follow up should take all the replies posted on the
|  website into account, and start from there to look more
|  in depth to what could be improved in the current efforts
|  for a Free U*nix Desktop.
|
|  For obvious reason, I would really appreciate any feedback
|  from both KDE and GNOME: comments on the article, on the
|  replies sent to LJ, errors, missing issues, whatever. Of
|  course, you are welcome to pass this request to any developer
|  or forum you think appropriate. If you do so, please let me
|  know, however, so I can get involved in the discussion.
|
|  I look forward to hear from you.
|
|       Best Regards,
|                      Marco Fioretti
|
|  -------------------------------------------------------

-- 

Vadim Plessky
SVG Icons * BlueSphere Icons 0.3.0 released
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net
My KDE page
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/