HIG (Future of KDE Development)

[Matt Rogers]

On Tuesday 15 February 2005 12:24 pm, Christoph Cullmann wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 February 2005 19:12, Andras Mantia wrote:
> > To go back to the main idea: I agree the issue with MDI must be cleared
> > up in the HIG. A good solution would be a mode looking like the current
> > IDEAl one which can be configured to behave like a top-level mode, if
> > the user likes that way by detaching the toolviews and main views. And
> > would be nice if all applications having similar features could use a
> > standard library.
>
> yes, same feelings here, IDEA is great for most stuff, if the toolviews
> would be correctly usable if detached I guess it would fit most needs, and
> it would still be consistent. current kmdi with the different modes is just
> plain hell.
>

i still think there is a need for all those modes, mostly because they're not 
implemented anywhere else, and people still want to use them.

> we need a desktop wide consistent concept how to handle tabbing, sidebars(+
> it's toolviews) and splitting, implemented in some kmdi successor, which
> can be used by all apps needing it. Important aspect is to allow the app
> developers to control how much of this features will be enabled to the
> users, e.g. splitting might not be wanted everywhere, same goes for
> tabbing, which maybe not suited for apps only wanting a IDEA style gui with
> sidebars.
>
> main technical aspect I guess is: does we wan't to fix kdockwidgets for kde
> 4.x or does we want to base the new IDEA style GUI on QDockWindow (if they
> allow to sanely implement the featureset needed by IDEA)
>

that's already something I'm looking into, haven't gotten far, but at least 
QDockWindow in Qt4 an the seperation between toolbars and dock windows is 
better.

> tabbing behaviour is again a aspect needing to be more consistent,
> konqueror and kate use similar tabbing style in 3.4, quanta and kdevelop
> differ here for example, but that's OT I guess, and more a detail problem.
>

If you and Andras (or anybody else for that matter), have ideas, suggestions, 
or issues you want to discuss with me regarding kmdi for KDE 4, then we need 
to have a chat on irc or something, because otherwise, i'm just going to do 
with kmdi what i think is best and the people that actually use it will 
probably hate me for it. ;)

Matt