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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Developing applications for KDE4
From:       "Robert Knight" <robertknight () gmail ! com>
Date:       2007-01-30 7:41:27
Message-ID: 13ed09c00701292341r3c5a08f0qa1cec0fe5b8c0325 () mail ! gmail ! com
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> adobe acrobat: slow, bloated, not embeddable, only does pdf's, enforces drm,
> people have an interest on working on kpdf.

Actually it is much simpler than that.  Adobe Acrobat is not free
software.  The stated purpose of KDE is to develop a free software
desktop.




On 30/01/07, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo@kde.org> wrote:
> On Monday 29 January 2007 23:23, Ian Wadham wrote:
> > On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:30 am, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> > > A Dilluns 29 Gener 2007, Bryan Wilkerson va escriure:
> > lengthy thread on "Moving KSirc to extragear".  I am happier because,
> > after 7 or 8 months, I have been able to commit my first creative change
> > to my game and got into the lead paragraph in 28 Jan Commit Digest :-)
>
> =)
>
> > I am *not* happy because I have lost 7 months of development for no
> > real gain that I can see.
>
> as a developer of kgoldrunner, perhaps not. i wish we only had to worry about
> a subset of applications and not the collected needs presented before us.
> ed
>
> > of what appears to be "mushroom management" in this project.
>
> sorry, i'm not familiar with this term. can you explain further?
>
> > > How long before KDE4 makes into RH, SuSE or Ubuntu?
> >
> > I'd really like to know.  A few months ago a young musician from New
> > York sent me a set of brilliant and extremely challenging levels for my
> > game, but where and when can I publish them?
>
> 3.5.6 that was shipped recently. well, too late now. how about 3.5.7?
>
> > I put off releasing them
> > with KDE 3.5.5 or 3.5.6, because I believed KDE4 to be imminent ;-)
>
> you know, i've been telling people until quite recently (e.g. the last month
> or two) for quite some time that if you are working on applications to
> continue doing so with kde3. kde4 is only now getting to a point where
> periphery application development makes sense IMHO.
>
> > Should I give up waiting and go for 3.5.7?
>
> it's not either/or.
>
> > Also I have another game
> > which I wrote nearly a year ago, as an exercise in 3D OpenGL.  Should
> > I polish that up and go for a 3.5.7 release?
>
> sure, why not? i'm not sure i get your point here.
>
> > > > Why should someone need to have the KDE4 desktop installed
> > > > in order to have a decent PDF reader?
> >
> > Why indeed?  What is wrong with Adobe Acrobat?  More importantly,
> > why are KDE developers, who are said to be overworked and
> > undermanned, writing competitors for Adobe Acrobat, OpenOffice.org,
> > Firefox, GNU Cash and Xephem?  Please be assured, I am in no
> > way criticising the apps themselves, just the use of valuable effort.
>
> in each case you're missing two points, and in some cases three:
>
>  - we don't direct centrally who can work on what. welcome to open source.
>  - the apps you mention all have limitations that are addressed by kde (and
> other) alternatives
>  - some examples you give came later than the kde alternatives
>
> adobe acrobat: slow, bloated, not embeddable, only does pdf's, enforces drm,
> people have an interest on working on kpdf.
>
> OOo: slow (koffice has blemishes on this account too), bloated, not
> embeddable, limited in scope compared to koffice. happened long after
> koffice, which people have an interest in working on.
>
> GNU Cash: i suppose you mean kmymoney. you do realize that that is a "3rd
> party app", right? i hope you understand we can't go around colonizing every
> project that uses kde libs and commanding them to do something else.
>
> Xephem: don't know enough about it to comment.
>
> > Qt has list-processing classes ... but wait! ... Qt has re-defined those
> > classes several times in the last few years, necessitating repeated
> > changes in every application that uses them, including mine.  It's
>
> erm. they changed with Qt 4.0. so i count that as "once". how do you
> count "several times"?
>
> > Keeping up with the incessant changes that occur in Qt and KDE
> > libraries is (humorously?) known as "maintenance" and failure to
> > keep up with them is punishable by death (of application).  Real software
>
> yes, so all those hours i put in porting literally millions of lines of code
> for every change i made in kdelibs was what? and my efforts pale in
> comparison to those of people like montel, faure and others. we've done as
> best we can to do the work for you; deprecated calls still exist as do usages
> of kde3support ... which is yet more work we've taken upon ourselves to ease
> transition.
>
> as for the "punishable by death" statement, what is "punishable by death" is
> an app that isn't maintained for which there are quality alternatives.
> weren't you going on about not reinventing wheels and wasting effort earlier?
>
> as a counter example, we're hanging on to krfb/krdc because they are important
> and have no viable alternatives right now ... in spite of the maintenance of
> them in dubious states right now.
>
> > example of the latter).  Only rarely have I had to spend much time
> > accommodating changes in the programming platform, even as a
> > software support person, but now I find that it is an overhead of as
> > much as 40% of all the work I do in KDE.
>
> perhaps our fault wasn't telling people such as yourself quite clear enough
> not to start working on your apps a year ago. i tried to voice this and
> thought i could rely on the release leadership we had in previous years; that
> release leadership essentially went away and nobody really stepped up to fill
> that gap. we're addressing that now, albeit later than we should have. i
> won't even speak of my disappointment in those who complain and did nothing.
>
> > the point, I do not feel that I will ever progress further and offer all
> > that I believe I can offer to the KDE community, such as working on
> > more serious applications.
>
> is this dramatism or do you really feel this way? (serious question)
>
> > On the other, if all the talent in KDE and Trolltech could put its heads
> > together to come up with some *stable* core libraries, I am sure there
> > would be a quantum leap in Open Source application development,
> > to say nothing of greater acceptance for Linux and Open Source in
> > the marketplace.  We might even have apps that could run on several
> > successive versions of the KDE Desktop.
>
> the "if only you would then ..."
>
> s,you,we,g
>
> > Is that too much to ask?
>
> what do you think?
>
> > But then (depressing thought) maybe application developers in KDE
> > *like* doing "maintenance" caused by changes in KDE or Qt ... :-(
>
> it's not depressing, it's rediculous.
>
> i'm tired of this negative crap with people lolling their heads about
> going "oh woe is me". look around you ( the royal "you", everyone reading
> this). go look at what okular, ligature, ksysguard, kdegames and others have
> accomplished with kde4. seriously look at the frameworks improvements that
> have gone into it. if you wish to dismiss the successful work of others, then
> please do so into /dev/null.
>
> i'm all ears for rational and constructive criticism, but the current fad of
> negativity is more than i can bear, and i suspect i'm not the only one. it's
> dragging me down.
>
> so .. frustrated? great! express that in terms of solutions.
>
> feeling like hi-jacking a thread on kde-devel to do little else than poison
> the spirits of others who actually happen to be making nice progress? take a
> walk in the fresh air and come back when the feeling has passed.
>
> --
> Aaron J. Seigo
> humru othro a kohnu se
> GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
>
> Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
>
>
>
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>
>
>
 
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