some questions regarding KDE vs. GNOME cooperations.

[Waldo Bastian]

On Monday 10 March 2003 08:21, Ali Akcaagac wrote:
> Hello, I have found some writings regarding KDE and GNOME the past
> couple of weeks which I find highly irritating, maybe because I have
> problems understanding all of them correctly. Therefore I would like to
> ask for some clearing comments on my following topics.

A number of people are looking into possibilities to have KDE and GNOME better 
cooperate.

> 1) There are a bunch of writings on the GNOME, KDE and Freedesktop
> Mailinglists about changing the default KDE Configuration in favour of
> GConf (Windows Registry and written by GNOME) as new default
> Configuration. What exactly is up with that ? Some KDE developers (At
> least I think they are) write it will become part of KDE really soon and
> some write it will not happen.

There is no actual work being done on that that I know of. GConf addresses 
some issues that we would like to see improved in KDE's current configuration 
framework. We can either address those issues independently or a 
jointly-developed GConf-like system could be used for it. Whatever route is 
choosen, backwards compatibility for both developers and users will be a very 
strong concern.

> 2) There are a bunch of writings about KDE trying to adopt GStreamer
> (written by GNOME) for KDE 4.0 as default Multimedia Framework and
> getting rid of ARTS. What's up with that since GStreamer depends on
> GLib.

I think there is a realistic possibility that KDE will adopt GStreamer for 
things such as video streaming. Other than that, the role of arts within KDE 
is being dicussed as well and may in the future be limited to advanced audio 
applications while another solution could be adopted for more modest sound 
requirements. 

> 3) There are a bunch of writings about KDE reducing configurations
> because GNOME did it with their 2.x release. And some replies from KDE
> people were that this won't happen. Instead removing Configuration
> options, these options should get arranged better. And now on OSnews.com
> there is a writing http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2997 where
> the leading KDE developer team and the leading GNOME developer team seem
> to have found a consens that indeed heavy configurability hurt and that
> something has to be done. Does this mean that KDE is removing the same
> way as GNOME did ? How will new arrangement of Options reduce complexity
> ?

Better organisation doesn't reduce complexity but it makes it easier to 
manage. Just imagine that the phone dictionary wasn't sorted on alphabet, it 
wouldn't make the dictionary more complex but it would make it impossible to 
use.

> 4) A bunch of KDE developers found their way to the GNOME development
> lists and they are talking about adopting DBus (written by GNOME) for
> KDE 4.0. 

DBus is an attempt to make a DCOP-like technology that has a somewhat wider 
appeal than DCOP has at the moment. Both KDE and GNOME developers are 
involved with this but most work is done by GNOME developers at the moment. 
Neither desktop has committed itself to adopting it and at the moment it's 
mostly an exercise to get familar with the technology and try out new 
concepts.

Note that KDE developers refer to KDE 4.0 because KDE 4.0 will be a good point 
to adopt new technology since it will have somehwat less strict requirements 
wrt backwards compatibility than KDE 3.x releases. It doesn't mean that there 
are concrete plans to work towards a KDE 4.0 release. The only major KDE 
release that is planned so far is KDE 3.2. I personally expect KDE 3.2 to be 
followed by KDE 3.3.

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian at kde.org -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- bastian at suse.com

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