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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Hot topics (Re: political issues)
From:       Rik Hemsley <rik () kde ! org>
Date:       1999-11-04 23:20:25
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#if Stefan Westerfeld
> I also have no opinion technically to the filedialog thingy, but something
> to the discussion.

I simply avoid discussions like that the minute people start arguing rather
than discussing sensibly. I am one of the only (usually fairly vocal)
people who didn't write a single message regarding the leaf-background
'debate'.

> - Prefer solutions that are accepted and/or widely used in the free linux
>      world.

Remembering that some of us use non-Linux platforms of course :)
/me gets upset when 'Linux' and 'KDE' are always used in the same breath,
as if they're inextricably linked somehow.

> But if the KDE project would follow all these, I think we would be deciding
> wrong in the political section, moving from a free desktop to a set of Qt
> example apps (which just wrap a bit of functionality).

Yes. One interesting thing is that as KDE has progressed, doing the 'cool'
stuff that Qt couldn't do (like richtext), Qt has integrated similar features
afterwards. I think this is the way it will carry on, and I also think
this is a Good Thing. It seems to work very well. For example, KTreeView
was a neat widget, but had some problems. QListView has now been officially
adopted. Qt gets better, KDE moves on to bigger and better things.

> Also, some arguments go like:
> - free software developers just can't produce the quality one can reach
>   in commercial entities like Troll Tech or Microsoft

Heh, I think we all know how untrue that is. I also think no-one would
claim to be in some way 'better' than a commercial developer. We will usually
be playing catch-up, but where commercial software has disadvantages, we
have extra advantages, and vice versa. I can't imagine there are many
companies that allow you to just do your own thing and drop it into
the repository when you feel like it.

There is one thing that niggles me - the huge discussions that went
on recently on kde-look. After all the heartache and effort of the people
running the show there, some people at KDE-2 simply went ahead and made
their own decisions without consultation.

While of course there have to be some core people who make final decisions,
there simply won't be any people like those on kde-look anymore if they
feel they aren't being listened to.

> If you do hacking just to do hacking (as Matthias once put it) - that
> means just for fun, like someone watches TV - then you are probably
> satisfied with prototyping something, to see it re-implemented a year later
> in a library written by a company, and your (more open in the sense of
> development model) solution dropped.

Of course. I started hacking a year back. Despite the days spent staring
blankly at debug output and going through 3 keyboards when my frustrated
limbs lashed out and threw coffee over them, I find working on KDE stuff
to be great fun.

I've spent a whole year writing a mail client. If Teddy checks in Magellan
tomorrow and it blows Empath out of the water (seems likely), then I'm
not going to care. I enjoy what I do and it's a learning experience.
A year ago I'd never heard of iterators or reference counting.

So, if Qt produce a file dialog that matches or exceeds the capabilities
of KFileDialog, and it's possible for us to use it while retaining some
flexibility (previewing, toolbar changing, etc) then I say use it and
be happy you have less lower-level work to do.

It would be nice if instead of simply taking offence when one of the
core developers (including those who work for Troll Tech) says that
they think that using QFileDialog would be a good idea, they were treated
with the respect they deserve.

If you don't credit other developers with intelligence and treat them
respectfully, then every issue will become the subject of an argument,
rather than simply going through the normal procedure - suggestion,
questions, refinement, agreement.

Cheers,
Rik - karma police ;)

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