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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: The filedialog, please read
From:       Richard Moore <rich () ipso-facto ! freeserve ! co ! uk>
Date:       1999-11-04 17:53:05
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pbrown@redhat.com wrote:
> 
> OK I am not going to quote all the points that have been made and then
> systematically try to win the debate.  :)
> 
> KFileDialog is a nice attempt.  I'm not saying it can't be a great dialog.
> But the simple fact is _right now_, it is _broken_.  And it has been
> broken for _ages_.
> 
> QFileDialog is _not_ broken.

To be honest I would say it is broken by design - it is simply not
flexible enough. You have nowhere near enough control over the look
and feel. It is not finished enough to make the release Qt version,
so why should we use it in KDE? QFD has been crap for as long as I
have been using Qt and has not been fixed despite this being hammered
home time and again - I know Reggie's version is all new and improved,
but if it is as shit hot as you say then please answer the following:

- Why isn't released?
- Can you use it embedded in an apps view?
- Can you reuse the view widgets?
- Why does it replicate so many of the UI design bugs that have been
repeatedly identified with the MS dialog? See the GUI hall of shame.
Note that some of these problems have been fixed in some recent MS
apps.
- Can you use single click?
- Can you add new types of view?
- Can you customise the tool bar?
- Can you make the toolbar a KToolBar?
- Does it really have to look as bad as it does in Motif L&F?
- Can you use it with 'virtual' file systems (eg. to navigate data
structures)?
- Why has noone from Troll been asking us how we would like it to
work? If you Trolls are so gung-ho about us using it we should have
been involved in the design. This has been an ongoing issue with the
KDE-Troll association, and sadly the increase in the number of KDE
developers working for Troll seems to be making it worse rather than
better. I am deeply unhappy. Perhaps I should start working on Harmony
rather than KDE? ;-)

Note of the above are just me pissing in the wind - they are all
possible with KFD.

Most of the issues people have raised with KFD have been either wrong
or trivial fixes. In fact several have been caused by work arounds
for annoying limits in Qt (such as poor support for single click
operation), or people working on implementing the missing features
that have been raised. In place editing, for example is possible, but
I am not happy with my implementation - until I find a cleaner way to
do it, I won't be adding it to kfile. I see more arguments for
improving KFD than for using QFD - feel free to try to explain why
I should think otherwise.

Your grumpily

Rich.
-- 
     Richard Moore		rich@ipso-facto.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.robocast.com/	richard@robocast.com
http://developer.kde.org/	rich@kde.org

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