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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Active Desktop (ish)
From:       "Steven D'Aprano" <dippy () mikka ! net ! au>
Date:       2002-04-01 14:38:19
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On Mon,  1 Apr 2002 22:28, David Golden wrote:

> > I don't quite follow exactly what you are attempting to do, or why,
> > so please excuse me if this is in the blindingly obvious "yes I
> > already knew that" category, but you can view the desktop in an
> > ordinary konq window just by setting the url to
> > /home/<user>/Desktop/.
>
> Yes, exactly - now think about it in reverse - so why have a separate
> kdesktop program ?  If konq is already able to show the Desktop
> (modulo dir backdrops which is a feature I sorely miss from kfm), why
> not use konq-on-the-root-window _as_ the desktop?

The desktop as it stands is not quite the same as a konq window.

By accident or design, there are some slight UI differences. Perhaps 
the most obvious is that on the desktop, you can place an icon anywhere
you like, while in a konq window icons always show up in alphabetical
order.

For the record, I think that the kdesktop icon placement, which is 
similar to Mac and Windows icon placement, is an improvement over 
always-alphabetical mode, particularly for directories with only a few
icons. It would be nice to migrate that ability into konq, rather than
have it disappear.

> Then, to generalise the interface, stick browser controls
> (up/back/fwd) and address bar in the panel...

So presumably you could display any URL as the desktop?

Wouldn't that be confusing for beginners?

And more importantly, wouldn't it defeat the purpose of having a 
consistant desktop?

It seems to me that you could get the effect you were after simply by
having a maximized konq window on each desktop. You could probably 
write a script to create one such window on each virtual desktop, set
each one to the URL of your choice (~/Desktop1 through ~/DesktopN 
perhaps), and stick the script in your startup directory.

Which brings me to a question: I'm too old and too busy to learn C++ 
so I can program KDE apps. But is there an interface to KDE that you 
can call from bash or scripting languages like Python, and where can I
learn more about it? It seems to me that people are requesting, and 
building into the core KDE apps, features that are better treated as
add-ons via a script of some sort.

For instance, every time somebody says "it would be cool if KDE would
automatically start up with Feature X", we should be saying "why don't
you add a script to your startup directory to do it?" instead of adding
yet another feature to KDE.

Especially features that are only of interest to one or two people.

Instead of going down the Microsoft philosophy of one application that 
does everything, and has a quadzillion configuration options, we should
be following the Unix/Linux philosophy of getting the result you want 
by scripting or piping together lots of little tools.

That way, folks like me who can't program C or C++ to save their life,
could still contribute shell scripts. And rather than filling kcontrol
with a zillion options to turn this thing on and that thing off, if 
there is a feature you don't want, you just move the script from your 
startup directory to your "don't startup" directory.

(This is not meant to be a replacement for kcontrol for core KDE apps.
It is meant as an addition, for non-standard options and features.)


-- 
Steven D'Aprano

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