KDE (vs GNOME)

[Jonas Christian Drewsen]

On Wednesday 09 November 2005 02:02, you wrote:
> On Tuesday 08 November 2005 06:04, Jonas Christian Drewsen wrote:
> > I think KDE could get rid of lot of bloat by:
> >
> > 1) Strip Control Center and other setting dialogs to the most common
> > stuff.
> >
> > 2) Create a new app called e.g. KTweakGui or something that can be used
> > for all the special things like text shadows, cursor settings etc.
> >
> > This way KDE will be easy for new users and for common operations. At the
> > same time, many things that can only be tweaked by altering settings
> > files in .kde/ today, would have a nice GUI too.
>
> I like this idea as well.  Scott and I struggle with JuK in trying to add
> features without having to add a "Configure JuK" dialog.  So far we're
> still winning but it would be nice in general I think to have the configure
> dialogs of the major KDE applications have the necessary options and then
> have a KTweakUI for advanced uses.
>
> *but*... how would this actually work in practice?  Seems like it would
> just be a split between KControl (useful for everyone) and the theoretical
> KTweakUI (useful for advanced).  What I'm mainly talking about is how do we
> ensure that although less-needed features are still discoverable if they're
> buried in a separate program?

I see your point. If a program really has some small features that could be 
important to someone in order to get the job done, I think they should be put 
in an "advance" section.

What I'm looking for is to remove all pure bloat from the config dialogs. e.g. 
in kmail you can  set custom fonts and colors. I think it is very nice to be 
able to do so, but it is not necessary to get your job done. These kind of 
things should be moved into KTweakUI.

There are offcourse many corner cases, and we should probably let the 
usability group decide on what should go to KTweakUI and what is an "advance" 
option.

> Also, I like Thiago's idea for scriptability, especially if there was a
> kdelibs way of managing the scripts.  I mean, if we're going to push this
> into many different programs then it would probably be a good idea to get a
> feel for how we manage the interface to the scripts so that programs can
> share that kind of code, just as we do for keyboard shortcuts and the rest.

I really like Thiago's idea as well :)

> But perhaps there's a better option out there?
>
> Regards,
>  - Michael Pyne