khelpcenter+drkonqi -> kdelibs (Re: Refactoring KCM technology)

[David Faure]

On Monday 22 March 2004 06:48, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> > It does not work fine as it is now. What happens when the use select
> > "Help->X Handbook" in an arbitrary KDE application while only having
> > kdelibs installed?
> 
> Nothing, as well as you can't use another language as english, 
> applications needing some kioslaves won't run (e.g. KMail or 
> KHelpcenter), you can't configure aspects of the applications which 
> need kcontrol modules from kdebase, etc.
> 
> Face it: kdebase is required to run KDE applications. If you try to move 
> all the stuff which is needed to kdelibs you will effectively move half 
> of kdebase which certainly is not what we want.

Many KOffice users, for instance, want to use KOffice without having to install 
kdebase nor use KDE. The solution for this is quite simple: moving khelpcenter
and drkonqi (useless, since koffice never crashes :) to kdelibs, and adding
a combobox for selecting the language in koffice's own configure dialogs.
Configuring other aspects of the application (like what, widget style?) is for KDE users,
it's not necessary to use a KDE application.

I have yet to see a good argument against moving khelpcenter and drkonqi to kdelibs,
I'm currently very inclined to do so. kdebase shouldn't be required to run KDE apps,
most of it isn't needed, only khelpcenter and drkonqi (and kcmshell for some apps, 
which I just moved as requested by Frans).
Imagine if openoffice forced people to install gnome just to get the help to appear :-)))

kioslaves are another problem; I think we all agreed that the pop and imap slaves
should be moved to kdepim now that KDE-3.2 is out. Do I remember wrong, or should
I proceed?
"khelpcenter needs a kioslave too" is a bad example since kio_help is in kdelibs...

Cornelius: please consider the koffice case; or kdepim once the kioslaves are moved.
Requiring kdebase is a problem for non-kde users, and it's a problem that can be fixed,
so let's fix it.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).