[KDE/Mac] Help with installation on Xquartz via Fink

[René J.V. Bertin]

Hi,

On Monday September 15 2014 06:21:37 Larry Brunelle wrote:
> Thanks for your explanations.  (As is obvious,) I'd not kept up with the various
> changes KDE for Mac has undergone.  If I understand you correctly, there is no
> such thing as an X11 root window with a KDE taskbar, menu, etc., on a Mac
> today, except if in another platform hosted in a VM.   I think I also understand that

Not with the KDE4 versions you're likely to find in MacPorts or Fink. 
However, nothing stops you from installing qt4-x11 from MacPorts (provided that still actually works ...) and then install the KDE packages you want from source, using the latest KDE4 packages.

> a) I MIGHT get another WM such as WindowMaker to run in a root window, or

Yes, I think you might even get a GNome desktop up and running, as that doesn't depend on Qt, and even in MacPorts GNome and GTk ports default to using X11.
But of course that won't give you KDE on your X11 desktop, and I also don't know how well session management will work when it doesn't have full control over a session.

I did in fact do something similar upto and including 10.4, running ctwm and my X11 server in rootless/fullscreen mode, what I called "the other side of the screen". But that was more because I had rather clearly separated workflows (one using "pure X11"), and this helped prevent any issues with clipboard syncing.
Nowadays I still use ctwm, but a rooted X11 server so my xterms appear among the other windows on that "Space".

> b) I might pursue a similar logical paradigm of work as I do now by some use of
>     "spaces" and perhaps not using X11 at all.

Yep. It's clear that you don't need X11 if all you want is to run certain KDE applications.

R.