[kde-linux] Revive Quanta+?

[john Culleton]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2011 03:28:23 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan at cox.net> wrote:

> 
> While IIRC I've never used that app, I do see kde4-port-requests for
> it from time to time.  And IIRC someone did start the port at one
> point, but AFAIK they moved on to something else and no one else has
> ever picked it up.
> 
> That's how it goes with all-volunteer projects (and while some people
> get paid to work on kde, in that case it's that business
> volunteering, I don't believe anyone but maybe a sysadmin gets paid
> by kde itself), pretty much.  If no one with the appropriate skills
> (or money to pay for someone who does) has sufficient itch, it
> doesn't get scratched for other users lacking the skills/money,
> either.
> 
> Thus, what I can say is that if it has a sufficient audience of 
> sufficiently loyal fans, even if they don't have the skills, if
> they're sufficiently loyal, someone will without a doubt step forward
> with a fund- raising drive to give the apparently missing motivation
> to someone who does have the skills.  Lacking that, while there's
> obvious interest at /some/ level (or I'd not see the occasional
> requests/inquiries), there's also obviously not /enough/ interest to
> either directly or indirectly (money) motivate someone with the
> skills to do that port.
> 
> It's too bad, really, but don't give up hope.  It wasn't /that/ long
> ago that pretty much all of kde4 was still rather broken.  (I've
> repeatedly stated my position that despite claims of being ready for
> ordinary use, 4.2 was clearly alpha, 4.3 was early beta, 4.4 was rc,
> and only with late 4.5 (4.5.4+) did things finally reach proper
> release status.  That was only about a year ago.)  So it's quite
> possible that someone might yet step up to port quanta+, now that
> kde4 itself is reasonably stable.
> 
> OTOH, with all the bad blood in the early kde4 era due to claims that
> 4.2 and 4.3 especially were ready for ordinary use when they clearly
> weren't, and due to killing kde 3.x support after a very high
> visibility promise that it would continue as long as there were users
> and before its 4.x replacement actually worked properly, it's also
> very possible, even likely, that anyone who /might/ have been
> interested in porting quanta ended up quitting in disgust and
> switching to some other less broken desktop, never to think about
> working on or using kde again as they don't want to be associated
> with that reputation.  I certainly couldn't blame anyone for that as
> I too might well have gone elsewhere if there were any other
> freedomware desktops as full-featured as kde in general, that respect
> and encourage user customization to the degree that kde normally
> does.  But I'm stubborn and stuck with it, and while I ended up
> switching to non-kde solutions for most of my apps and have
> semantic-desktop turned off at build-time (gentoo so
> USE=-semantic-desktop), I'm now happier with the core kde4 (minus
> semantic-desktop) than with kde3, however long it took to get to that
> stage, and even tho it's too bad I had to jettison all the kde3 apps
> I used to run to get there.
> 
Work is supported by apps, apps by a desktop, and a desktop by an
operating system. If you had to jettison apps that is a shame. I
am stuck in an apps conflict. My work requires among others
Scribus and Inkscape. These have been modernized to work with QT4.
I also have to maintain web pages. Hence the current discussion
of Quanta+. It died with no replacement.

One of the overrated virtues of Open Software developement is 
integration with an overall project like KDE. If Quanta were
independent of KDE we wouldn't be having this discussion. 

One of the virtues of the Open Software approach is freedom of
choice. When the KDE folks messed up KMail I switched to Claws
Mail. When the KDE interface became clumsy and slow I switched to
XFCE. I replaced the weak apps in KOffice with better ones from
Libre. But for the task of web page production two projects have
fallen apart, Quanta+ and now Amaya. Bluefish is the last app
standing. It is decent and well maintained but lacks some of the
features of Quanta+.

Back to work. 


-- 
John Culleton
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