kde decoupled from qt ( an outlandish or implausible idea? )

[corey_s at cox.net]

( Hopefully this hasn't been thoroughly discussed already, I couldn't find
  any similar threads in google )

Greetings - I'm new to the list, have been avidly following KDE's progress
over the years, and very much appreciate the foundational libraries and
components that KDE provides; very cool and impressive stuff, and getting
better constantly.

The issue that continues to keep me from adopting kde as my desktop env is
simply that I tend to very much dislike gui's in most all forms... except
where strictly necessary or generaly practical, such as in webbrowsers,
uml/diagram apps, graphic apps, pdf's, etc. etc. What really floats my boat
are console/curses apps and cmd line driven apps. I rock at the shell, but
I just can't get used to gui file managers, gui cvs apps, gui mail apps,
gui address books, gui this and that - I (personaly) feel they're too slow,
distracting ( icons/buttons/nobbies/frames/etc ), and inefficient, among
other things. As well, gui's simply don't fit with my own baised sense of
aesthetics - I love text, I love the keyboard, I love xterms, and I love
minimism. I don't have issue with QT, I have issue with gui's.

What I _do_ like however, are extremely rich backend interfaces/libs/components
etc, that provide a ton of extremely useful and well-integrated foundational 
functionality from which to build applications - this is where we all know kde 
totally shines, the next closest thing, I _guess_, would be GNUStep/Cocoa - a 
far cry, certainly. ( I don't like the gnome framework. )

So, perhaps this is just too bad for me - I should either get over it, or
compromise, or forget about it and not use kde. But maybe not...
 
Disclaimer, the following is fairly half-baked... please don't flame or
condescend, this is just the early beginnings of an idea. I have a severely
limited understanding of the kde "platform" from a developers standpoint. 

What I'm interested in is hopefully getting some straight opinions and detailed
information regarding the possibility (the pipe-dream??) of perhaps considering
the idea of decoupling/abstracting the backend kde libs from qt - so that a 
project could be born with the purpose of creating a completely gui-toolkit 
neutral kde, or something equivilant.

To start, which of the kde api's could most easily be used completely outside
of qt? I'd love to be able to have the power of kio in my xsession throughout
all apps - like to have the ability of, something along the lines of: 
"cd ftp://blah.org" right in my command shell, or to build a console/curses 
based version of kaddress book - that sorta thing.

Stuff like khtml, kio, dcop, kprint, kparts ( kutils, kresources, kabc ??? ) 
are all *super* cool, it would be absolutely phenomenal if this stuff were 
available in a state where we could use just as effectively, but merely with
an alternative front end to that of qt.

Is this completely whacked, or just unfeasable? ... or both?

I imagine of course it may not be easy, it would have to be done in small steps,
and I imagine it would be slow going - but I'm wondering if it is even feasibly
possible, or whether I'm just totally off base, not having any real clue of the
realities involved?

Would anyone care to explain, if even just to humor me: out of the current kde
api's, which would be the most possible for such a decoupling? Where would such
an endeavor start? Just how engrained _is_ qt to the backend stuff?

Thanks for listening, and many thanks for your input.


Beers,

Corey


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