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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Experiences, speed issues, bugs...
From:       Jelmer Feenstra <spark () dds ! nl>
Date:       2000-12-19 14:40:35
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Hi there !

First I want all of you to know that I am thrilled by the things the kde2 
team has accomplished so far, I've been following mailinglists, irc channels, 
websites and daily cvs versions closely and all I can say is : Wow, this is 
one wonderful project !

To give some examples of features / aspects of the kde2 desktop environment 
that I really like (before moving on to the negative issues :) :

- It's complete, it really has so many useful applications, to name a few I 
really use a lot and work very nice : konqueror, kghostview, kmail, knode, 
konsole.. etc. Also, things like documentation and tutorials are available 
when it comes to kde2, this is what todays (and the future) desktop needs. 
Very nice.
- It's a great environment for development, the object oriented design of the 
libraries makes it a good platform for various developers to start coding. 
Having said that, I've been pushing our sysadmin from our university 
computerscience department to install kde2 on all workstations, it's going to 
happen soon. Kdevelop 1.4 coming along very nice as well, I for one plan on 
using that to develop my 'designproject' that I need to do for my study 
(Computer Science) with 3 fellow students.
- It's clean, though extremely customizable.

Now onto the problems and shortcomings I've experienced. I've been summing up 
all of my inconveniences I've had using kde2 and decided to post them to this 
list to start some discussion (I know some of the bugs are already reported 
but most of them date back quite some time). 

note : I am still using QT 2.2.2, so perhaps some of these issues have been 
resolved, although I didn't find anything in QT's changelog.
Also, I'm running CVS from 18-12 on a pentium II running at 338 MHz with 64MB 
memory, XFree86 4.0.1, Linux 2.2.18.

Speed issues

- showing up of several configure dialogs is rather slow (especially 
konqueror's configure dialog).
- selecting text in konqueror (viewing websites) is slow (QT related ?), 
sometimes not even possible.
- the highlighting of hyperlinks when moving the mouse over a link (viewing 
websites) also slow
- when the renderer is busy, responsiveness of konqueror is bad (can that be 
changed without introducing threading ?)
- going back using the button on the toolbar seems to be slow compared to IE 
(ah, shoot me :)
- important speed issue IMHO: rendering of large lists of text, combined 
with, for example, icons is *very* slow. Try http://incoming.debian.org.
- redrawing of windows seems slow, this is especially noticed when trying to 
switch desktops (with apps opened on them) fast.

Minor issues
- favorite icon enabled doesn't show it's enabled in konqueror's config dialog
- when using the application launcher to start apps the spinning disk 
(program loading) doesn't appear (this is a bug, right ?)

Qt related (not sure about this though)
- typing too fast (I notice it every once in a while when type urls in 
konqueror's locationbar) results in a space being inserted instead of an 
enter when done typing the url and hitting enter.
- sometimes it's possible to select the url in the locationbar, but editing 
isn't possible (this happens at rather unpredictable moments) even though the 
konqueror in question has focus and klipper isn't interfering with the url :) 

Wishlist
- possibility to set the khtml backgroundcolor, for other that white 
background settings (I know it's the responsibility of the web designer, but 
I really think this would be nice to have)
- possibility to disable the statusbar in fullscreen mode, forgive me if this 
is something already implemented somehow, I really couldn't find it anywhere.
- possibility to jump to the locationbar and selecting the url with a 
shortcut; this allows for quick location entering. I know there is ctrl-o, 
but this needs another ctrl-a and a dialog is popped up (slows down). Perhaps 
the clear location bar feature I saw in the keybindings list is what I need, 
but it didn't seem to do anything for me.
- a button that allows me to skip to the next image in the directory when I'm 
viewing .jpeg's etc (using kview embedded in konqueror).
- more feedback when browsing; especially the ticking sound made by IE when 
clicking links really gives the user the idea of responsiveness. Also, the 
statusbar remains blank when a host is trying to be contacted, perhaps it's 
good practice to state this in the statusbar ?

A few rendering related things (I know JS and khtml need work; just 
mentioning them :)
- http://www.ilse.nl renders incorrect (look at konqueror's scrollbar on your right)
- JS: these things don't seem to do anything : JavaScript:sendReq('DUMMY'). I 
really don't know anything about JS, but I'm really keen on seeing this fixed 
as it allows me to do my online banking in linux using konqueror (netscape 
won't even connect using SSL).
- A rather painful bug I think, it's been around for quite some time : <IMG 
SRC="test.jpg" HEIGHT=60%>, the fact that HEIGHT=60% is there results in the 
image not being rendered.

Well, I might be utterly wrong on some of these issues, but I really felt I 
had to pass this back to you guys. Sorry if I seem inappropriate in what I've 
summed up above.

Thanks for all the great work,

Jelmer Feenstra
 
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