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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: What to do after 2.2?
From:       Ralf Nolden <nolden () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-07-13 14:45:57
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George Staikos wrote:
> 
> On Friday 13 July 2001 09:51, Rob Kaper wrote:
> 
> > > After all one of the reasons why there are so many GTK-applications is
> > > that they had a more or less stable API for a long time. If we make KDE
> > > 3.0 anything beyond something that is slightly more than a recompile then
> > > you shouldn't expect that the number of KDE-applications will grow
> > > significantly over the next 9-12 months which would really bad in effect
> > > and which would push us quite a bit back. Who wants to develop for a
> > > platform if it changes every few months?
> >
> > I never implied we should break BC whereever possible. :-)
> 
>    Personally I'll be pretty pissed off if I have to recompile all my apps
> barely a year after 2.0 came out.  Yeah the new features are nice and all,
> but breaking applications is very unprofessional.

George, what would you suppose to do then ? wait for Qt 4.0 in hope to
keep the 2.x series up ? To my point of view, the Qt 2.x series was
there to implement a new API set with breaking a lot of 1.4x stuff. The
Qt 2.x to Qt 3.0 difference on the source layer isn't that big except
for the styles. This allows easy porting and we should consider Qt 3.0
to have all the features and API a desktop environment with the
according applications needs in the next couple of years. So with KDE
adopting Qt 3.0 as soon as possible, the timeframe of the KDE 3.x series
will be a lot longer than the 2.x series was. The 2.x series was so
short because it took us how long ? to give out a KDE 2.0 that was based
on the Qt 2.x series. Given that you can bring out a new KDE version to
use the current Qt version right after Qt has been released, KDE apps
have the same life-cycle source and binary-wise like Qt apps have, thus
the customers of commercial applications available under KDE. I am very
much in favour not only because of the new features in Qt but also
because of the simple fact that the styles are now plugins so a native
Qt-only application looks like a KDE application under KDE. That is one
fact that can't be valued enough because as long as a Qt app looks
different from a KDE app, you can't tell anyone who _needs_
crossplatform development that his Qt windows version is giving him the
windows port and the Qt Linux/Unix version is giving him the KDE port
(except you want to work with #ifdef's for KApplication and so on to
adopt the KDE look).

Another thing is that as bero already mentioned, the hebrew and arabic
language support. Remember that a translation team has to be gathered
and you have to give them the time to catch up with the other teams to
bring out a KDE version that supports their language completely.

I would say that as it's now known that Qt 3 will be ready by september
(or is expected to be ready by then) we should move to using Qt 3 right
after the 2.2 release and keep a 2_2_BRANCH open for critical fixes
until we can release a first alpha of KDE 3.0 which I expect to be ready
by October/November and a first beta in December. Given the short time
that the actual sourceporting takes, this is reasonable I think and a
clear way for any developer out there who already works on an app for
KDE 2.x. Gathering the API changes that we will do to KDE libs for 3.0
constantly and document what has changed and name the according
replacement functionality is the best way we can support a current KDE
developer outside the KDE project working on an app. As most are
developing with KDevelop, they just have to update the admin dir in
their project directory to update to the newest checks and stuff and we
can easily provide this and the help that is needed to bring out almost
_all_ current third party KDE 2.x apps as a 3.0 version as soon as
alpha/beta versions of KDE 3.0 are provided.

/me pleads for Qt 3.0 after KDE 2.2 and for not guilty :)

Cheers,

Ralf
--
We're not a company, we just produce better code at less costs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralf Nolden
nolden@kde.org

The K Desktop Environment	The KDevelop Project
http://www.kde.org		http://www.kdevelop.org

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