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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Developing applications for KDE4
From:       Ian Wadham <ianw2 () optusnet ! com ! au>
Date:       2007-01-30 6:23:58
Message-ID: 200701301723.59018.ianw2 () optusnet ! com ! au
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On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:30 am, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> A Dilluns 29 Gener 2007, Bryan Wilkerson va escriure:
> > Tightly coupling applications like this to KDE seems unnecessary to me.
>
> How long before KDE4 makes into RH, SuSE or Ubuntu?
> Well, if we don't code for it, it will be never, that's why we are working
> on KDE4.
>
> > Why should someone need to have the
> > KDE4 desktop installed in order to have a decent PDF reader?
>
> Why make it KDE based even? We could go and just use Qt, or wait, why
> use Qt when you can code it all in asm?
> ... <snip>
> You are the first person i meet that does not wants people developing
> for KDE4 :-)
>
Well I am one who is not happy developing for KDE4.  I am somewhat
happier than I was when I read the above snippet, which raises several
issues of design, software engineering and management, as did the
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.

In my wilder moments I think maybe KDE4 is some kind of dastardly
plot, by who knows whom, to stifle Open Source development and delay it
indefinitely.  More realistically I worry that KDE may be hitting the "second
system" syndrome (was it in "The Mythical Man Month" by FP Brookes?).

KDE4 has all the symptoms ... continually receding completion estimates,
no definite schedule, no firm specification or feature list, plenty of
assertions about how great it is going to be ...  Unfortunately I have
witnessed several projects with similar characteristics sink under the
weight of "improvements" to a system which was previously a success.
I fervently hope KDE4 will not go there, but I am certainly getting tired
of what appears to be "mushroom management" in this project.

> 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?  I put off releasing them
with KDE 3.5.5 or 3.5.6, because I believed KDE4 to be imminent ;-)
Should I give up waiting and go for 3.5.7?  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?

> > 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.

> Why make it KDE based even? We could go and just use Qt, or wait,
> why use Qt when you can code it all in asm?
We use libraries and higher level languages to save us re-inventing
a whole lot of wheels every time we write an application program.
That's obvious, and has been so for 50 or 60 years, ever since the
first function library and compiler were developed.  Object-oriented
programming offered a way to extend the power of libraries enormously
... and it has delivered!  I'd like to have a hot dinner for every linked
list procedure I have had to write! :-)

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
only an hour or two per app, but multiply that by the number of apps!

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
maintenance has to do with fixing bugs, making changes requested
by users, making improvements suggested by developers and
accommodating changes to data formats (Y2K was an egregious
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.

As I said, I am something like 7 months behind on what I would like
to be doing - making some creative additions to my game.  More to
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.  Games were just a way for me to learn
Linux, C++, Qt and KDE, but I seem to be stuck there ...

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.  Is that too much to ask?

But then (depressing thought) maybe application developers in KDE
*like* doing "maintenance" caused by changes in KDE or Qt ... :-(

All the best, Ian W.




 
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