Redefining kdelibs and kdebase

[Kevin Krammer]

On Sunday 28 August 2005 21:32, Simon Hausmann wrote:

[snip]

> The customizations I see are mostly simple GUI elements. Check boxes,
> comboboxes, some labels with no interaction between them. We could use a
> simple piece of XML to describe options like these, send them to the other
> process and in the reply get the chosen options.

Sounds doable, but I am not sure how responsive this would be.
Like when doing something like this:
- user selects file
- information about newly selected file gets transmitted to application
- application updates XML description of additional elements
- XML description transmitted to dialog
- dialog parses XML and updates extra widgets

> It's not as flexible as the current solution where you get access to the
> widget, but on the other hand think of the advantages from a user's
> perspective:
>
> (this is beyond your specific concern, but I'll take the opportunity to use
> this reply to stress the advantage of the approach in general)
>
> *) Imagine kmail on windows, let the user attach a file. You really do want
> to see the windows file dialog there. Same for printing.

Well, I see the adantage of KDE as a desktop provider :)
KDE applications on Windows would then be restricted to the possibilities of 
the Windows file dialog and could offer features like remote file access only 
on KDE, thus giving KDE an advantage in competing with other desktop 
providers.

> *) Mozilla/Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Gtk applications could just fire off
> their request on d-bus and the user would see the nice KDE file dialog when
> running inside KDE

Would be nice indeed.

> I admit we do loose a little bit of flexibility, but in my opinion we would
> gain a lot, without changing the common case where applications just use
> the static functions to get a file path or to fire up a print dialog.

I am a bit afraid we move into a situation wrapper toolkits like wxWidgets or 
SWT are in, i.e. only be able to guarantee least denominator functionality

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer <kevin.krammer at gmx.at>
Qt/KDE Developer, Debian User
Moderator: www.mrunix.de (German), www.qtforum.org
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