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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Help KDE-PIM with developer resources?
From:       Philippe Fremy <phil () freehackers ! org>
Date:       2006-02-20 16:34:00
Message-ID: 43F9EF78.4050706 () freehackers ! org
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> > of view) how many tools are now available now on windows. Apart from the
> > platform itself, probably 80% of my daily tool usage on windows is free
> > software: vi, tortoisecvs, thunderbird, firefox, pyqt (closed source
> > version), cygwin, python, clamwin, workrave, openoffice, doxygen,
> > pdfcreator, winmerge, scite.
> 
> enjoy it while it lasts. and ironically for you, the only way it will last is 
> if the open source desktop is successful.
> 

I make everything I can so that it can succeed. If my time was not eaten
by my job, you would see more contribution from me in KDE. A cvs/svn
client with the ease of use of Tortoise is for example badly missing.
And my kmerge which was never ported from KDE1 :-(.

> 
> > Unfortunately, there are closed source tools for smart card development
> > and smart card reader that are core to my business and that run only on
> > windows. And we are developing tools for our clients, which have to run
> > on windows. So leaving windows is not an option for my company.
> 
> 
> ... and the cycle repeats. question: are you developing your software in such 
> a way that it's easily portable (or already portable) to non-microsoft 
> platforms where the smart card reader hardware is supported (perhaps in the 
> future)? i'm going to guess, given the above description, that the answer is 
> "no", but i'm hoping i'm wrong.

You guessed wrong. :-) Although I do not see the transition happening
anytime soon, all our tools are developed in PyQt, python, boost and
some C++ stuff. It used to be 100% portable but over the time,
maintaining an unused port was a lot of hassle for nothing, so it would
now probably take less than one month to be 100% ready for linux. I even
use tmake (yes, the old qt2 tmake) because I find it easier to manage
than real Visual C++ projects.

boost.python is espacially tricky to get working on both linux and windows.

I do not know the windows API so I do everthing the unix way.
Surprisingly, it works quite well on windows. Who said that windows was
not posix compliant ?

> > One issue I have with kolab is that, my sysadmin does not like it. We
> > have a fully working smtp + imap + webmail + pop3 solution and his
> > impression is that this does not fit well with kolab, which tries to
> > handle everything by himself. It looks like it is going to mess our
> > stable configuration a lot.
> 
> ..... so ..... now the problem is your sysadmin? this is pretty typical as 
> well for these kinds of situations: there has really already been a decision 
> made and the justifications for it are delivered as necessary, ad infinitum, 
> until hands are thrown up in the air and everyone agrees that it's really 
> just not worth the hassle to continue examining it.

We are not in this case. Since outlook looked like the only usable
client for kollab on windows, we gave up the idea. But this is not the
first time I hear that sysadmin do not like the installation of kolab.
So, that's one obstacle the kolab developers should be aware of.

> i think your sysadmin is mistaken as well, btw. but that's a conversation that 
> should be taken to the kolab mailing lists, not here.

Indeed. I'll ask him if he can post his doubts.

> i try and recommend the best solution for the job. you've decided that you 
> have to stay on microsoft windows, and on that platform (which is not, in my 
> opinion, the best solution for the job of client-side computing, but we work 
> with what we have), the best solution for the job of "groupware client" is 
> outlook. it may suck, but when you make a decision to use a specific platform 
> you get all its warts along with it.

Indeed. The situation is still a lot better than few years ago, at least
I do not have to run a full blown microsoft toolset to work everyday.

	regards,

	Philippe
 
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