On Thursday 02 of July 2009, Adam Treat wrote: > On Thursday 02 July 2009 04:47:23 am Lubos Lunak wrote: > > If Arora becomes a more popular KDE browser than Konqueror, will there > > be actually still any major use for KParts? My biggest problem with > > quickly dismissing Konqueror is that a lot of work has been invested into > > it, and you don't often noticed that until you start missing things. > > Konqueror used to have only the very simple image viewer part that was > > annoying to use, until the Gwenview KPart came (and in KDE4 it's not what > > it used to be, since KDE3 Gwenview was scrapped for KDE4). How long did > > it take until most people stopped complaining about Plasma, two years > > (and I still run into things here and there I wish I had the time to do > > something about)? And so on. Do we want to repeat that with the > > webbrowser? > > Again, I'm not pushing for anything. If people like and want to use Arora, > then I don't see any problem with that. If Arora popularity grows to > become more and more popular amongst KDE users through natural growth and > choice, then what have you lost? All of the features of Konqueror that have been developed over the time (some of those mine, and I don't feel like coding them again)? I am just trying to understand the desire for going with something else than Konqueror, and so far I don't see anything convincing, so I am looking for the reasons. And I personally am concerned about the current situation because it reminds me a similar one a while back: KWin vs Compiz. Before KDE4 Compiz was the new kid on the block, it had bling, developer community, youtube videos, people were saying how it was the best technology ever with modules and what not, and how KDE and GNOME should adopt it. KWin was the neglected old thing with just one developer occassionally keeping an eye on it and it looked like its days were counted. Do you know what we would have now if we went that way? We would depend on a window manager with bling, a very unclear future, rotten poor codebase, dying developer community, 1.0 release nowhere in sight and no stability or feature parity with the previous solution. I'm afraid I won't have the time to do much about this browser problem myself :-/, but I would like to see people consider possibilities before something gets in practice thrown out because of a new kid on the block. Arora or Rekonq may look nice at the moment, but right now they seem more like hobby projects to me, and who says they still will look that nice when they reach the status when they will be a Konqueror replacement? That is why I would like to know the technical reasons. > > Moreover, I don't know Konqueror very well, but could somebody point out > > how Konqueror is tied to KHTML? I thought Konqueror was mostly a shell > > that didn't care that much about what the part does. Grepping the sources > > for KHTML doesn't show anything interesting. There is > > KParts::BrowserExtension used a lot, but I don't see anything overly > > complex there. So where is all the deep integration with KHTML? > > Try looking at the settings for one. That is all heavily tied to KHTML. I'm confused. Do you mean the configuration modules? If yes, then I really expected better than that. That would be like claiming that Konqueror was too deeply integrated with the Konqueror fileview KPart and that the DolphinView KPart was woefully insufficient. How is adjusting or rewriting kcm modules more work than writing a new webbrowser? Please explain what you mean. And, BTW, you are now pushing for something, whether you like it or not, because you have made it to OSNews as the expert on the issue who knows that it is not worth to work on WebKit integration in Konqueror. So is it not, really? -- Lubos Lunak KDE developer -------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX, s.r.o. e-mail: l.lunak@suse.cz , l.lunak@kde.org Lihovarska 1060/12 tel: +420 284 028 972 190 00 Prague 9 fax: +420 284 028 951 Czech Republic http://www.suse.cz