dependencies on KJS/KHTML in kdelibs and kdebase-runtime

[Marco Martin]

On Tuesday 28 September 2010, koos vriezen wrote:
> > but for the libraries? they should be repurposable without pain. and this
> > is what this thread is about :)
> 
> Well, I'm sceptical about that. I think that an app developer can save
> itself lots of time to just do a real port. The app probably gets a
> better abstraction between the platform UI and app specific UI too,
> taken that both ports are maintained. Of course this takes some time
> to pay off.

depends what you define as a "real port".
eliminating an kdelibs dependency to me is most about doing a not fully 
working and time consuming fork that is no ore the original application at 
all. in this i'm completely not interested.
what i believe instead is that we have a platform that while it still has many 
"desktop" aspects that yes will have to be removed, is already better compared 
to most of what there is around (that was designed when mobile devices were 
significantly less resourced, even if we are talking simply about 2 years)
that's why? because we have more features, that are not an evil thing that is 
there just to eat resources, it helps to make applications better.
if to achieve the sae functionality of let's say kmail they had to basically 
reimplement soething already provided by kdelibs, it would have been more 
expensive, longer, more code duplication, so more bugs, and everyone loses.
everyone.

> >> Given that touch is fairly new compared to the desktop, no doubt
> >> things diverge further.
> > 
> > i actually think they'll converge rather than diverge, into a nice long
> > device spectrum. that's how to aggregate developer effort and how to get
> > users what they _really_ want -> the tools they use, travelling about
> > with them.
> 
> Hmm, I don't see that many changes on the desktop the last 10 years
> (you no doubt would argue that there wasn't plasma back then :). E.g.
> my PC, an dual core 2 is three years old and I really have no reason
> to upgrade any time soon.

that is true for PCs yes, complete opposite for mobile hardware, that is 
evolving very fast (just compare a g1 with a nexus one...) that (save for 
battery consumption) many of the performnce assumptions done there are going 
to fall, leaving the possibility of doing some application (finally) 
interesting.
now, my bet is on our -platform-, rather than ome random app here and there 
that sharesjust a bit of the functionality and the name. it's the "hard" bet, 
but the easy one bah, not interested :p

Cheers,
Marco Martin