From kde-core-devel  Tue Jan 22 16:23:39 2002
From: David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 16:23:39 +0000
To: kde-core-devel
Subject: Re: Qt-only KDE applications
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=101171664213141

On Tuesday 22 January 2002 16:55, Neil Stevens wrote:
> On Tuesday January 22, 2002 04:45, Matthias Ettrich wrote:
> > Opinions? Do you think that would be useful at all?
> 
> I think it'd discourage KDE application development, encouraging instead 
> Qt application development, because it'd make people think that Qt apps 
> could be "close enough" for KDE users to tolerate.  So it'd be harmful to 
> KDE.

I think this is quite far-fetched.
Qt-only development is already encouraged by the fact that Qt-only is 
Windows-only whereas KDE isn't. Those who make this choice currently don't 
care much about their Qt app look like in KDE - or if they care, at least 
they decided that Windows portability is more important. What Matthias 
suggests is that in such a case, where portability is _already_ weighted as 
more important than KDE functionality, the app will at least look more 
integrated into KDE, that's all.

> Ultimately, it won't ever make Qt apps be real KDE apps anyway, so KDE 
> users lose.

Of course not, since they'll get more apps.

> Who wins?  Application developers aimed at securing the largest possible 
> audience.  This allows them to get a raft of KDE services, without 
> abandoning their core Windows market.

... which means we'll have more specialized (probably commercial) applications 
running under Linux, with a nice Qt/KDE look-and-feel. I don't think this 
enters in competition with free software (which doesn't care much about 
running on Windows, most of the time). We all know that KDE covers the basic 
needs of a desktop, the general purpose applications, but we're very far from 
having a KDE (or even Linux) replacement for every existing commercial 
Windows application!! To make Linux a viable replacement, we need to see 
those specialized applications becoming available, and this is going to 
happen sooner with a cross-platform toolkit than if we require people to 
maintain two different versions of their application.

Trying to keep qt-only apps away from KDE look-n-feel sounds like a 
proprietary approach to me, along the lines of "it's our stuff, you're not 
allowed to look like it, if you're not really it". I don't think this fits 
very well with the idea of freedom we're trying to convey, nor with the 
effort of integration/consistency that KDE is all about.

I wish every app out there would be a real Qt+KDE app, and every OS would be a 
free Unix. But that's just not the case, and never going to happen (a good 
proportion maybe, but 100%, never).

-- 
David FAURE, david@mandrakesoft.com, faure@kde.org
http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~david, http://www.konqueror.org
KDE 3.0: Konquering the Desktops