Office/ and Utilities/ menu reorganization

[Michael Nottebrock]

On Tuesday, 9. August 2005 16:10, Maks Orlovich wrote:

> In any way, I am going quite against the grain here when I say that I think
> what you're suggesting (and what packages are doing) is a grave mistake. I
> believe the current KDE package structure is a big strength, 

I can actually agree with you that it *used to be* a big strength in the past 
and it actually did help making KDE the successful project and large project 
it is today. 

However, it has become too successful and too large to continue this sort of 
'embrace-and-extend' business:

Too successful because there are just too many great applications to stuff 
them all into the kde mainline modules.

Too large because if it were not too large, users would not complain to the 
packagers about why they get a whole slew of applications they do not one 
with the package they need to install for the one or two they do want.

> as it makes it 
> easy to have a desktop that has all the functionality a person will likely
> ever need (and yes, I think k3b ought to be in kdemultimedia), so the
> people can /work/ and not play update-the-package or find-the-app.

Again, I can understand from a historical perspective, but you need to face 
the fact that the days where KDE fans needed to grab the sources themselves 
and compile them (because the OS at their workplace only ran motif & mwm or 
the makers of their linux distribution firmly believed in an fvwm2-based 
desktop) are very much over. 

Today, KDE is brought onto the user's desktops by the distributors and more 
precisely, by the distributor's packagers, and they very much *share* your 
desire to provide a nicely integrated desktop people can do work with - but 
they will be able to do it easier and even better aligned to their userbase's 
needs and demands if KDE (or rather, a few KDE developers) would stop trying 
to impose their own ideas about which applications belong onto a user's 
desktop by means of the module tarballs onto everyone.

And let me say again that some modules DO make perfect sense because the 
applications within them are integrated with each other very tightly. I'd 
never seriously consider breaking up kdebase for instance, nor has any 
KDE/FreeBSD user ever requested such a thing.

-- 
   ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock               | lofi at freebsd.org
 (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve     | http://www.freebsd.org
   \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org
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