KDE Integration mailing-list and module

[Andreas Pour]

"Friedrich W. H. Kossebau" wrote:

[ ... ]

> You mean KDE is doomed to repeat what OS/2 did (if I got history correctly?)?
> Offering support for the competitor api and then loosing because you did only
> offer the basic and not all the additional features of that other api in your
> own compatible envorinment (and maybe miss to do enough promotion for the own
> advantages?

Supporting integration of applications that use the same windowing environment
is hardly the same as supporting applications written for a different OS.

But let me ask you this, if you want to think about the whole OS/2 route:  do
you think it would help or hurt KDE if all software written for MS systems could
run on, and integrate nicely with, KDE?

> So vendors who started with the common denominator got temptated to expand
> their apps with some special features of that other api, as they already had
> a base to start from?
> 
> Hm. You may have a point. But what is different with KDE and GNOME (and
> other)? Its the availability of the source. No hidden features or apis.
> 
> And we could learn from history (oh, has that ever been done?;) by doing the
> opposite: Offer compatibility with GNOME for KDE! Make KDE apps and parts
> integrate into the GNOME world by writing a QT style that gets the skin from
> a GTK style thingie. And add support for the GTK/GNOME dialogs (for the sake
> of it, uhm). And whatever more is needed.
> 
> What about that?

That would make the situation symmetric and remove whatever incentive there is
to use GTK once GTK apps are nicely integrated into KDE.

Personally I think the goal should be toolkit agnosticism.  And the competition
should not be between "desktops" but between "applications" (e.g., Evolution vs.
Kontakt, GAIM vs. Kopete).  Does it really matter which window manager a user
uses?  Or which panel?  So long as KDE applets run in the GNOME panel and vice
versa, it does not matter at all.

And in this way Linux users get twice as many apps and we can focus on the
*real* competition, which is not another Linux desktop but headequartered
somewhere in the Northwest US . . . :-) .

Ciao,

Dre