Re: KDE and Gnome

[Hongli Lai <h lai chello nl>]

On Tuesday 26 August 2003 00:16, Taj Morton wrote:
> Now that I've ranted my head off and probably offended a lot of people,

Please don't associate us with the "OSS developers don't listen to 
users"-stereotype from Slashdot.


> let me explain some of my ideas.
> The way to do some of this is to add it at the X level. For example,
> it's very lucky that we have a XClipboard. If we didn't, we'd have
> Klipboard and gBoard.

Actually we do - Klipper and GNOME Clipboard Manager.


> The answer to several other things is _standards_.

That's what the Freedesktop.org group is doing. www.freedesktop.org
They've been around for several years now.


> For example, we need
> a desktop standard. We should just have one ~/Desktop folder which holds
> items on the desktop. That way, you could eaisly swap between Gnome and
> KDE without loosing your desktop.

The new Nautilus already uses ~/Desktop.


> Also, interfaces need to be standardized. When you start an app in the
> Windows world, you *expect* the interface to look the same. You *expect*
> Ctrl+C to copy and you *expect* Alt+F4 to close. Having the *look*
> change is very confusing to newbies. I have installed Linux for a couple
> of people and the one thing that they say that they don't like is how
> apps look different. This *must* change.

I'd say you're using the wrong distribution. RedHat and Mandrake, both desktop 
distros, have unified themes that make GNOME and KDE apps look the same.


> Now, I'm not into some kill KDE or kill Gnome. Nor do I like Bluecurve.
> It was terrible (IMHO, anyway).

And this is a problem that will never, ever go away. RedHat offers a unified 
look, but some people dislike it.
No matter what unified theme GNOME and KDE adopt, there will *always* be 
people who dislike the look. Some people absolutely love Bluecurve, others 
want to kill it. Some people like flat themes because they "look more 
professional", others think flat is boring and want XP-ish themes.
Etc. etc. etc.
Forcing any unified look into stock GNOME and KDE would be a bad idea.


> I would just like to see the KDE and
> Gnome team working together, rather than duplicating each others work.
> There really isn't much difference between KWord and Abiword, except
> they use different toolkits.

Don't you think this difference is big enough? The difference between QT and 
GTK+ is *huge*. Porting from one to the other would require almost a total 
rewrite. Not to mention the difference in language (C vs C++). You're 
severely underestimating the problem.


> If the Abiword team was working with the
> KWord team (or vise-versa) on the same project, this one project would
> be light-years ahead of where it is right now. Also, it doesn't really
> help that much having two different word processors that do the same
> thing. It splits the development power, making *both of the projects*
> work more slowly.

This is in my opinion the wrong way of thinking. By saying "this and that 
should work together on one project", you're assuming that people are equal, 
have equal ideas, equal aestetic taste, equal design philosophies, etc.
People are not equal. Different people have different ideas. You can't expect 
everyone to work together. Especially when they're just volunteers who do 
what they want.
View open source competition as capitalism and free market. People do what 
they want and compete with each other. Telling them to go together and work 
on 1 thing:
1) Is impossible.
2) Takes away their freedom to do what they want.