some questions regarding KDE vs. GNOME cooperations.

[Luke Chatburn]

Hiya...

I'll just quickly wade in here... :)

GConf... People are currently having problems with it in technical terms, so
the jury is still out on that. Registries have advantages for coders, but
they are less intuitive for users than a control dialog in their app and a
control center. Config files also have portability and reliability benefits.

wrt KControl!:

The current idea is as follows:
The control center modules are being examined, cleaned up and reorganised to
make the layout intuitive. Having different levels of controls (Beginner,
Advanced, Expert) doesn't work from a task-set standpoint and confuses the
heck out of users. A number of people are looking at more visual navigation
methods. Personally, I'm cleaning up the styles/windows decs/colours stuff
at the moment to provide a unified and obvious place to change how your
windows look.

I've said it before, I'll say it again:

Users like options. Too many options in a confused layout makes configuring
things hard. You can cure this by removing lots of options (users don't
like), or just by reorganising them into a better layout. *A good layout of
options will feel the same to a user as simplification!*

Can this be done? KDE 3.2, we'll find out :)

I must say, I see a lot of Gnome users mooting that KDE devels should use
Gnome technologies, just because; yet there is no mention of Gnome using
KParts, DCOP or any of the features that make KDE easy and useful to develop
for, and ultimately offer a great deal of power to users.

And yes, it has to be said, credit where credit is due... QT is just a very,
very good toolkit. Producing KDE apps is child's play. I mean, if I can use
it (let's just say my C/C++/general coding skills are less than 1337),
anyone can, right? :)

-Luke

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Krammer" <kevin.krammer at gmx.at>
To: <kde at ktown.kde.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: [kde] some questions regarding KDE vs. GNOME cooperations.

On Dienstag, 11. März 2003 09:25, Mark Hillary wrote:
> On Monday 10 Mar 2003 10:04 pm, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > Haven't read about this yet.
> > I think that if GConf is superior to the current system technology
> > wise, it might be used in KDE4.
> > Please also note that KDE4 is not very near future :)
>
> I am not sure I like the idea of win reg style central configuration
> database. Maybe this is just down to my experience of the windows
> registry

As I said, the core developers are very unlikely adopting anything which
is not better than the current system.

> > The glib "problem" is IMHO not as big as mails from some people
> > suggest. Most KDE developers will only work with a highlevel KDE API
> > and never have to use gplib directly.
> > glib would only needed if creating new codec plugins and stuff like
> > that, which is usually written in C anyways, so using glib can't be a
> > problem from those developers.
>
> The problem is having another dependency(unless its one already).

My understandig is that the dependency library wise is not a problem or at
least not a big problem.

The major concerns sofar seem to be exposing glib stuff to KDE developers
and adding stuff already available in Qt, thus "bloating" KDE.

> > AFAIK the idea is to reduce the default number of options available
> > in control center but to have some kind of "extended config center"
> > for people who like to control more details of their environment.
> >
> > Like tweakUI on Windows, but as a KDE standard tool.
>
> I really hate this idea. Having two programs to configure the desktop
> is shear stupidity and would be deeply confusing to new users.
> Questions like "Which program do I use to configure the icons?" would
> arrise. As maybe under this scheme normal icon setup would be in app1
> and setting like animate icons or set effects would be in app2 as they
> are considered advance option.

I think kcontrol will still contain the usual options.

The new application is mainly for things you currently have to edit config
files for.

> What is a lot better is to improve the layout of kcontrol, moving
> options to an extra tab, or having a button called advanced options.
> And having sensible defaults.

I am not up to date in this matter.
If you're interested I suggest you subscribe to kde-usability.

> > The DBus thing seems to be very low level, below the current level of
> > desktop environments.

[snip]

> I know nothing about this, but it sounds very intresting. This would
> make the whole system more user friendly

I am hoping for that too.

Cheers,
Kevin

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kevin Krammer <kevin.krammer at gmx.at>

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