SimpleKDE Thoughts and Views

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday 27 September 2005 09:20, jedihobbes at gmail.com wrote:
> it seems an elegant and simple addition to the software we're planning
> on rolling out anyway.

unfortunately from a technical POV, it's neither of those things.

> What I'd like to see is
> SimpleKDE integrated into KDE so that either an administrator or a
> regular user can enable/disable the "advanced/complicated/confusing"
> aspects of straight KDE. In other words, how about an interface more
> in line with VLC's where, when you're working in the configuration
> system, you have the choice of either globally enabling or disabling
> "Advanced Options". By default, KDE can ship with it ON, and we can
> universally turn it OFF in our organisation. How much could this
> possible add to the final code?

a lot, and there's not many (any?) people around with the time and commitment 
to do it properly. moreover, "user levels" is a tried and failed mechanism. 
*however*...

... we do have Kiosk, which is very close to providing what you want in that 
you can limit and define what people can and cannot access and configure. 
some distributions (e.g. SUSE) even ship with a "simple KDE" configuration 
that takes out a lot of the complexities in a KDE installation.

i would suggest that putting time and effort into kiosktool and further kiosk 
support in kde apps (there's already been a TON of work done here =) would be 
a good investment of time and energy.

>    Of course, if the aim of SimpleKDE is not JUST to clean the
> interface, but to clean the code base too, then we are in a bit of a
> fix, as KDE+SimpleKDE would still leave us with the "dirty" code that
> SimpleKDE wants to clean out.

whether or not "SimpleKDE" is cleaning out "dirty" code may be a matter of 
personal opinion. i'd say they are removing a lot of code without really 
grasping the remaifications of those acxtions.

> Perhaps SimpleKDE could continue in its 
> existing "clean code/clean interface" fork (is it a fork,
> technically?)

technically and in all practicality. they've even been requested to change 
their name due to that.

> whilst still contributing changes to KDE concurrently, 
> thereby making KDE "clean-interface-ready", if not "clean-code-ready".

yes, i'd much rather see people work on tidying up interfaces in mainline KDE 
than wasting time butchering the code base in incompatible ways.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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