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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: The filedialog, please read
From:       Harri Porten <porten () tu-harburg ! de>
Date:       1999-11-04 19:29:06
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Matthias Ettrich wrote:
> 
> This is getting unfair. As a Troll I don't care whatever filedialog KDE uses.
> As KDE developer and user, I want KDE to have a good filedialog.

But does it have to be perfect ? Aren't all free software projects
striving to become better ? Why are we writing apps like word processors
from scratch while feature-complete versions already exist ?
 
> Reggie and Torben designed the new file dialog mainly from a  KDE perspective,
> to fulfill the subclassing needs and the flexibility required. Few of our
> commercial customers will need this flexibility, it was mainly development time
> invested for KDE. The snapshot releases and the public CVS are an open
> invitiation to see what's going on and to comment on that.

Huh ? If it was mainly done for KDE why wasn't it discussed here ? Ok,
ok, all of us tend to do some work in an closed environment before going
public. But why didn't this work end in a kfiledialog2 then ? The
author(s) would have been free to re-use, re-license and sell it.

> Please think twice before posting accusations like that.  It's not that easy to
> be a Troll, with commercial customers that pay for your living on the one
> side and KDE and the fun in hacking for it on the other.

Granted. You have to earn your living. But please consider that hundreds
of other individuals are working for free on something else (KDE!). The
look and design of that "baby" should be governed by those. Otherwise
they'll simply lose interest in working any further.
What you do for your customers is done thing, what gets included into
KDE is something else. There shouldn't be no automatism.

> We are trying to
> combine both, so that both sides win. Sometimes we manage that, sometimes we
> fail. Much of the work done in QFileDialog will help KDE in several places
> (just think about QIconView) in either way.
> I'm really getting pissed by that discussion. What's the big thing about a file
> dialog? 

It's not only about a file dialog. It's about a trend. A trend to stomp
intellectual potential in KDE's CVS. Why did you start KDE, Matthias ?
Certainly to create something on your own. If I wanted a whole set of
ready-to-use libraries I would use the MFCs. That would be too boring,
though.

> baby as you claim here, then maintain it. There's was more than a year time,
> there are still some weeks left. What we have now doesn't even work and you
> blame Reggie and Torben for writing code?!
> 
> I will really stop commenting on that now. This is getting ridiculously stupid.
> Finally we see what the 'K' stands for: Kindergarden.

Well, the majority of KDE developers work in their spare time. Toying
around like a child is part of that hobby ;)

Harri.

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