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List: kde-core-devel
Subject: Re: Qt-only KDE applications
From: David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date: 2002-01-22 16:23:39
[Download RAW message or body]
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
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