Hi,

I read this thread with interest both from the user and the developer perspective.
I would like to expose my little personal experience about this issue.

In the past month I developed the Katalog program which make extensively
use of KDE techologies and above all make use of a katalog:/ protocol for
accesing a particular archive of data. The feedback from the user was positive
but many complain about the annoince of typing every time the katalog:/
protocol in the URL and ask me to make in my program the magic that already
exists for tar:/ or zip:/ protocols. As many on this list already know this
is not yet possible and requires a little patch in konqueror code. Please
note that none ask me something like "please put a combo box on the address
bar" and if I propose to them such a solution they blame me.

Another example, I recently developed a little protocol for reading a format
of image file distributed in the webshots site. Then I tried to use that
protocol on some graphical KDE application (I remeber Kuickshow) and in
the wallpaper setting tool, surprise ! Many applications can handle correctly
protocols different from file:/ (This is amazing since using standard KDE
API, the problem does not exist) and the wallpaper tool refuse to support
"not local protocols" (what if I try to set as wallpaper stored in tar file?).

It seems that even KDE developers don't know the power of KIO slaves.

The solution of the problem in my opinion is not to expose protocols to
the users but to hide them and make all the programs aware and intellegent
about protocols.

Ciao, Stefano