proposal for full application scripting language in KDE 4

[Leo Savernik]

Am Sonntag, 8. Oktober 2006 00:13 schrieb Michael Pyne:
> Or in other words, I think KDE should only require 1 non-C++ language
> (looks like Python?) to be installed.

Why should KDE require -- from the user's point of view -- any external 
scripting language to be installed? A fully functional core distribution of 
KDE should work out of the box without imposing additional dependencies on 
the user. Otherwise, more and more core applications are going to be written 
in scripting languages up to the point where the user can't escape the speed 
and memory penalties caused by overzealous use of scripting. And scripting 
*does* incur speed and memory overhead (prime example Mozilla/Firefox).

An example where scripting is inappropriate: default configuration of 
Kicker/Plasma. Currently, my kicker - containing a conservative amount of 
applets - takes about 30M of ram. If half of these applets were written in 
Python and a quarter in JavaScript, it'd take 100M of ram.

An example where scripting is appropriate: full blown applications of 
kdegames/kdeedu. A typical user won't need them for productivity.

Summarised: Having a binding to an external scripting language as a 
first-class citizen in KDE: yes.
Forcing dependency on an external scripting language to have a usable desktop: 
no.

mfg
	Leo