plasma-desktop on other environments (bis)

[René J. V. Bertin]

David Edmundson wrote:


> Renè isn't doing the individual standalone OS X packages, which should have
> the tight host integration. Other people are doing that.

MacPorts makes it much more straightforward to provide cross-platform 
homogeneity because all required resources are installed in XDG-compliant 
locations and I provide a patched Qt port which can be made to use those 
locations with its QStandardPaths class. A lot of effort has gone into that, and 
I'd be more than happy if that effort benefits others outside of MacPorts too.

That doesn't mean that our KF5 applications shouldn't have as tight a host 
integration as possible. I just happen to feel that the one doesn't exclude the 
other. I just see integration more on the functional level, so for me standalone 
app bundles could just as well provide certain features that are less common, 
even if that means integrating less tightly in the look and feel department. 
Shipping everything in an app bundle also means the embedded Qt can be tweaked 
as required ... for the "host" application.

We have some great software on OS X, and Apple provide or used to provide a good 
part of that. After OS X 10.6 there has been an increasing abandon of features 
aimed at more advanced users (by Apple, except in things like Xcode). This is 
exactly why I have become involved with KDE/Mac. First because Apple Mail no 
longer corresponded to my needs, and later Xcode which has become, in a way, the 
iTunes of IDEs. KDevelop and Kontact are still the 2 main KDE applications I use 
on OS X.

If you're aiming at users who are not yet KDE "customers" on other platforms 
you'll need good arguments to woo them away from native alternatives like 
TextWrangler (the free version of the venerable BBEdit). From what I've seen 
until now native applications with their hand-tuned interfaces will always look 
better ("licked", "sexy") than Qt-based applications using the native platform 
plugin. Those have interfaces that work (mostly) but that have a decidedly 
unfinished look, even after addressing a few of the widget glitches I mentioned 
earlier *) Not really surprising, I think. Some KDE applications are more 
affected by this than others (dialogs always are). KDevelop would actually look 
pretty good were it not for the fact that it uses an inappropriate tabbar widget 
for the tabbed document editor.

I have no idea to what extent it's possible to improve the native look to make 
it feel less like there's a layout engine behind it that uses some sort of bare 
minimal common denominator algorithm that adds just a bit more safe margin 
everywhere than strictly required. And with that I mean improve it without 
tweaking the code or .ui files wherever that would be required. Maybe a single 
well-conceived stylesheet could do the trick, but from what I've seen even Qt's 
own IDE uses an internal theme to provide a consistent and appealing look and 
feel everywhere it runs.

Apologies for a long ramble, which I'm going to cut off here. Trying to 
formulate convincing arguments while under constant distraction from household 
chores is something I'm not so good at anymore :-/

R. 

*) I've put up 3 RRs that address 3 bug reports after the last round of exchange 
on this thread, and for some reason those haven't yet had any feedback from the 
framework developers.