KDE Integration mailing-list and module

[Philippe Fremy]

	Hi,

A lot of effort has been witnessed recentely to improve the integration of  
"foreign" applications into KDE. Let me cite:

- kde.openoffice.org NWF : provide KDE widgets and KDE dialogs in OpenOffice
- kde.openoffice.org : port OpenOffice graphic abstraction to Qt
- integration of qt/gtk event loop
- make gtk/gnome applications use a KDE theme
- use kde icons for Evolution or OpenOffice
- mounting IOSlaves through the kernel to make them usable by other apps
- better integration of KDE within the debian distribution with a new debian 
KDE-based installer

The topic is undoubtly hot. I would like to have a mailing-list and a new 
cvs module created to keep track of this KDE integration effort.

Why a kde-integration mailing-list ?
There are some technical issues that need to be discussed. This is also the 
place where people will pop-up to ask questions about how to improve 
integration.

Why a kde-integration cvs module ?
Having a central place for all this stuff will make it easy for people to 
work together on it and for distributions to pick it up. This does not fit 
in any of the existing KDE cvs modules (to my knowledge). It will have some 
weird dependancies (Gtk, fuse, ...)

One could argue about having it in kde-extragear but I think it makes more 
sense to dedicate a module to this. For example a dedicated module brings 
extra publicity.

Why this is good for KDE ?
Desktop running mixed toolkit applications is a reality. Many installations 
of KDE in enterprise are actually KDE + OpenOffice + Mozilla. Even if you 
go full KDE on browser and office suite, there are applications developed 
in Gtk that have no equivalents, like Gimp, dasher or GnomeMeeting.

If  we leverage all this integration correctly, we can really end up with 
KDE as the unifying desktop, the one in which all the applications look 
consistent.

Are applications going to develop with Gtk for KDE ?
Well, I don't think so. For somebody who runs KDE as its desktop and want to 
develop for KDE, Qt and KDE are the obvious choices. Especially if he is 
aware of kpart and dcop (and he should)

People developing with Gtk usually have their reasons like they want to 
integrate in Gnome, they don't want to touch C++ or they only know Gtk. But 
many of them are quite friendly to KDE and would be willing to make 
integration into KDE easier, like the sodipodi author did. I believe that 
if a small wrapper for the main KDE dialogs is developed, many Gtk 
applications are going to use it.

About the name:
Kurt suggests kde-integrative . While I think "KDE, the integrative desktop" 
is a great title, a noun makes more sense to me in a mailing list and a cvs 
module. Actually, I am not aware of any adjective in any or our mailing 
lists or cvs module. So I would go for kde-integration at kde.org and 
kde-integration for the cvs module

About the webpage:
I started a wiki page for maintaining up-to-date information on this 
integration topic. The page is still in draft state and is thus not linked 
from the main wiki page yet. This is wiki so you are welcome to conbribute. 
http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=KDE%2C+the+integrative+desktop

I am not subscribed to kde-core-devel so please include me in any reply.

	cheers,

	Philippe


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