[Fwd: KView for KDE4?]

[Aurelien Gateau]

Hello,

I'm the main developer of Gwenview.

James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> Gwenview seems OK, but it lacks features that I normally use.  Although
> it has some other features that are probably good.  I don't like the
> large cursor (hand) and I find that some things are not done the KDE
> way.  Although it would be nice if the disappearing floating toolbar was
> added to KDE.  The menus do not comply with the KDE standards -- but I
> forget that it is only the KView on my system that is compliant with the
> KDE menu standards :-).

The hand cursor will be removed soon I think. Can you give more details on
the things which are not done the KDE way ?

 
> I found the Gwenview KPart for Konqueror to be buggy.  While browsing, I
> came to an XCF file and although the app showed it fine, the action of
> the KPart was to open The GIMP.  Then I came to a small picture (jpg)
> and it opened the KPart for KView.

I guess you're speaking about the image KPart (Gwenview has two KParts, a
file and a dir one). I think this is just a problem of KPart priority: IIRC
it's Konqueror which decides whether it uses a part or start an application
when loading a file. If the setting for XCF is "Open in external app" and
the preferred KPart for JPEG files is KView you will get the behaviour you
observed.

Of course if there's some way to keep the same KPart while browsing files,
we would be glad to fix Gwenview.

 
> To some extent, I see only minor differences between Gwenview and KView
> so I wonder why the new project was started.  I don't think that
> Gwenview is ready and KView is a stable application.  I think that it
> would be less work to maintain KVIew then to get Gwenview ready.

I started Gwenview because I wanted an image viewer which would show the
current image and the other images of a folder in the same window (You've
got to keep in mind that Gwenview was started in 2000).

I would list the following advantages of Gwenview over KView (in no
particular order):
- Thumbnail view. (current SVN version can show big thumbnails up to
256x256).
- Support for KIPI plugins.
- Nicer (IMHO) fullscreen mode.
- JPEG comment editor.
- JPEG lossless operations (rotate/mirror)
- Bookmark support.
- The adjust-image-to-window mode is easier to toggle: It's on the toolbar
in Gwenview and will automatically be disabled when clicking on the zoom
toolbar icons. It's a configuration preference in KView, and it renders the
zoom toolbar icons useless.
- Much faster zooming. If I remember well, KView loads images in a QPixmap
and zooms this QPixmap, while Gwenview loads images in a QImage and only
zoom the visible region.
- Brightness and contrast adjustement (this feature needs more exposure,
though)
- Support for External tools.

Aurélien