KIO->GnomeVFS bridge started (looking for a Common-VFS)

[Benjamin Meyer]

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> > After all, having two widget sets is definitely a problem for a "Common
> > Desktop".
>
> Why? There are lots of different widget sets on other quite "successful"
> desktop operating systems and nobody would ever complain.
>
> Norbert

I 100% agree.  There will always be new toolkits.  One day something will 
surpass Qt.  There will always be companies like Sun pushing their new 
language to managers and there will always be hackers making silly new 
toolkits that can barely do anything.  And there will *always* be the _old_ 
toolkits from yesteryear which everyone wants to die, but they just wont. I 
hate to use Apple, but in this OS X has come the closest that I know.  Even 
java apps don't look crappy in the OSX.  They have hooks so you can intigrate 
into their stuff and make toolkit X work with their desktop.  If you have a 
common theme (widget and icon) you are most of the way there (somewhere in 
neaer 95%) in users eyes.  It is really sad, but also very true.  The very 
best thing for a common Linux desktop would be to work on making a 
freedesktop.org icon set.  And <b>*NO*</b> it can not be a former Gnome or 
KDE icon set.  It must be new so users associate it with FreeDesktop.Org and 
not Gnome or KDE.  That way you wont have the hard core Gnome/KDE users 
complaining that they will die before switching.  After that (or in 
conjunction) support the projects that either make a FreeDesktop.Org widget 
theme for every toolkit or have some sort of plugin system to allow toolkit A 
to load theme from toolkit B.  RedHat has kind of done this with their 
bluecurve theme, but I fear there are a few problems: Most user only 
associate it with Gnome.  RedHat's possible ownership and reluctance to make 
it a community "theme" over RedHat branding.  RedHat's treatment of KDE and 
our developers.

Off topic but...
I used Mozilla from time to time over the past (wow size years now?) and it 
was never really that great and never my browser of choice.  Firefox caught 
me completely off guard.  I was *tricked* into liking it.  My brain though 
"oh hey, this is new" even though it was using the same engine it was just a 
simplified Mozilla.  But it came across as a new enough of an app for me to 
really like it (because it had 6 years of Mozilla debuggin) and I suspect 
that happened to a lot of other people. Probably the best thing Gnome could 
do is to move from the 1980's motif theme for the new clean default widget 
theme.  Then users who had rejected Gnome would be tricked into liking Gnome 
apps thinking they was new when it had got nothing more then a coat of paint.

Anyway.   Multiple toolkits are a fact of life.  They are not going to go 
away.  That is why I am very excited about the progress on freedesktop.org.  
Ok so maybe some of the specifications are simple, but they are important.  A 
common bookmark file format, cookie, icon names, and one day maybe global 
configs.  You can't do all at once, but you can do them one at a time.  And 
if you want users to really think there is a common Linux desktop, support a 
common widget theme and icon set today.

- -Benjamin Meyer

- -- 
aka icefox
Public Key: http://www.icefox.net/public_key.asc
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