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List:       kfm-devel
Subject:    Re: KFM:Wishlist for 1.2
From:       Waldo Bastian <bastian () ens ! ascom ! ch>
Date:       1999-01-19 15:27:07
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Andrew Morton wrote:
> * I'm sure this has been discussed, but I'm interested in the
> conclusion: would it be a good idea to build Gecko (the guts of Mozilla)
> into KFM?

Maybe :) I am no proponent of it, but then again, as KHTML patcher I am
heavily biased :) If some people are willing to take a shot at it, we
can compare the KHTML based KFM with the Gecko based KFM. It would
certainly be interesting, but I am not going to do it.

> * This has been discussed recently on gnome-list: visual indication that
> an app is starting up (the hourglass cursor).  I realise that this is in
> some respects "not the Unix way", but surely something can be done?
> Even optionally?

Yes.. this is a very valid point. I think the application/tool launching
the
app should have a visual indication that it is doing something... The
code
to detect when an application has started should be placed in some
kdelib 
I guess. I would like to propose the 'turning gear' (is it called like
that?) 
as indicator. It is up to the application how it shows this. (E.g. KFM
has 
always a gear visible, but  Kpanel could overlay the button which was
clicked
 with a gear...)

> * Change the appearance of an icon when it's about to have something
> dropped on it.

Yes.. hopefully all this can be integrated when we start to use the new 
XDND protocol.

> Finally, would the KFM development team be interested if I were to do
> some development?

Yeah! Yeah! *hurray* we found someone :")

> If so, how to set about this?  What are the priority items? 
> Something modest to start out with, please.  (I've been doing C
> for 15 years, C++ for five - I like to think I'm fairly handy at it).

Well it is a complicated matter. We have the old KFM (KFM II) and we
have
a new KFM (KFM III). The old KFM is shipped with KDE 1.1 to be released
by the end of the month.

KFM II is currently maintained by David Faure. 
KFM III is a rewrite of KFM II by Torben Weis and uses CORBA.
(Torben also wrote all/most of KFM II)
Lars Knoll and I do the KHTML widget which handles the HTML stuff.

Then we have the kioslaves which do the I/O for KFM II. This is done by
various people at the moment.

After the release of KDE1.1 we drop KFM II as soon as possible and 
concentrate on KFM III. Since Torben is very secret about it nobody
knows
how good or bad it is, so this will be very interesting :)

KFM III will use some other kioslave design as well. (Can anyone tell
somewhat
more about this?)

The first task will probably be to move all functionality from KFM II
over to
KFM III (as far as it isn't in yet), the same goes for the kioslaves.

When that is done we can have a look at the bug-reports / wishlist and 
select the things we want to add to the new KFM.

Some good candidates:

*   Good working Drag&drop / cut&paste support using the new XDND
protocol.
*   Persistant I/O connections (kioslaves: http/ftp)
*   Better implementation of the file-handling stuff (we just have had
some
    last minute actions to get it a bit better before we release 1.1)

I'm sure a lot of good ideas for improvements/additions will come up on
this
list once 1.1 has been released.

Oh.. and on the KHTML part we are planning things like cascading
stylesheets
(CSS/1), HTML4.0, JavaScript and possibly Java. 

You can work on whatever you like most or, at your option, wat bothers
you most :)

Cheers,
Waldo
bastian@kde.org

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