[kde-linux] Users guide to KDE?

[David Jarvie]

On Friday 4 July 2008 7:57, david wrote:
> I think the KDE developers should have first (1) moved existing the KDE3
> series to QT4 and made that stable then (2) done the work for the new UI
> and fancy video effects stuff. Trying to do both at once was a mistake,
> IMHO.

Qt4 is sufficiently different to Qt3 to require some KDE3 code to be
completely rewritten. It wouldn't make sense to do this without taking the
opportunity to redesign those aspects of program at the same time - if
done in two steps, the total development effort would be much greater. So
although a simple conversion to Qt4 could have been done to some degree,
it was more efficient in terms of developers' time to do the library and
UI upgrades at the same time.

It's important to bear in mind that coding is largely done on a voluntary
basis, and making two separate transitions might well have been much less
appealing to developers, perhaps causing some to fall by the wayside. So
although the process hasn't been ideal for users who want to move to KDE4
as quickly as possible, it has probably been the most practical way of
doing things overall, and will result in a better product sooner (in KDE
4.1 or 4.2...).

-- 
David Jarvie.
KAlarm author & maintainer.
http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm