Re: KDE Interop [Was: D-BUS background]

[Vadim Plessky <plessky cnt ru>]

On Monday 10 March 2003 01:04, Havoc Pennington wrote:
|  On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 10:59:14PM +0300, Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  > I am curious to know where GNOME is ahead of KDE.
|  > I try every major GNOME release and still can't find it useful (as of
|  > 2.2 version).
|  > On the other hand, KDE became useful since 2.1 version.
|  > So, I am really curious to hear your arguments.
|
|  So we can have a neverending pointless thread about it? ;-)
|
|  There is some stuff in http://www.gnome.org/start/2.2/notes/ if you
|  want the party line.

ok, thanks for the pointer!

|
|  > |  The reason "enterprise customers" matter is that "enterprise
|  > | customer" basically means "customer who deploys lots of seats and pays
|  > | lots of money." And this is thus where you win significant marketshare
|  > | and make significant revenue. And that's where you can start having
|  > | some momentum.
|  >
|  > I doubt "enterprise customer" in current economical environment would
|  > wish to pay lots of money.
|
|  Of course everyone wishes to pay $0. However, even in the current
|  environment, there are plenty of people who are willing to pay money
|  for services and features that they need.

Yes, for sure.  But is there any Sales Force targeting those customers (with 
Linux Desktop, either GNOME or KDE, solutions)?
I recently started to work for HP (Hewlett-Packard).
The only options for Desktop which were allowed (when I was ordering my 
notebook from IT department) were 'Windows 2000' and 'Windows XP'.
Linux Desktop, in any kind of it, was just not listed.
To be fair, HP-UX was not an option, too (but it doesn't work on Intel laptops 
anyway)

In my case, I was ready to pay for my Desktop (to make it Linux) from my own 
pocket - CrossOver Office or Ximian Connector is not a huge investment for 
me, I can afford it.
But Linux is not listed as an option, at all.

|
|  > If you think that GNOME has larger development team - *why* GNOME is
|  > (IMHO) behind KDE (in terms of usability for *real world* apps, like
|  > mail client , office suit, etc.)?
|
|  Thinking of GNOME/KDE as complete application bundles is archaic
|  thinking.  Apps should work fine under any desktop, and the plan over

well, my favourite 'list of required apps' is:
* web browser
* mail client
* text editor, with Unicode support (like Kate, KWrite)
* control center, or Preferences dialog, which allows me to configure 
applications listed above.

For business use (in office environment):
* word processor, compatible with Word (.doc)
* PowerPoint-compatible program for presentations
* Excel-compatible spreadsheet

I have to add here that you can run MS Office on Pentium II (my currnet office 
laptop), but OpenOffice is hardly used on my Pentium III laptop.
So, OO is not an option for me.
KOffice also requires a lot of work to become useful (in office environment 
specified above).
This basically lefts me without Office Suit for Linux (either GNOME or KDE), 
so either current Desktops are archaic or not - is not the point.
It's fine to run GNOME or KDE at home - but those environments (unfortunately) 
do not fit to existing corportae environments :-(


|  the next couple years is to make them not only work but integrate
|  nicely, whether they are GTK or Qt apps. Nontechnical users do not
|  choose apps based on what toolkit they link to.

This would be certanly great!
But I need some working solution *now*.
Of course, it's allowed to run Linux Desktop if you work for RedHat. :-)
But in most companies, as I said, it's not an option.

|
|  That said, I have no idea what you mean about being behind in apps.
|  See the poll linked from http://dot.kde.org/1046679118/ for example.
|  Evolution, AbiWord, Gnumeric, etc.
|
|  The only way to prove this either way of course is for us to generate
|  a huge feature matrix and check all the boxes, otherwise this thread
|  will just go back and forth "yes" "no" "yes" "no" so really there is
|  no point in following up ;-)

well, I can tell you about typical requirements in corporate environment in a 
few words. I was working for several multinational, and few national 
companies (within last 10 years).
I would make this on example of preparing new Product Datasheet.
(that's what I need to do next week, for example)
I have several multi-page Word .doc files, which contain data about products.
It canbe untranslated (in English) or already translated, depends on product.
In case it's not in local language - I need to translate it and save to the 
same _.doc_ format as it was before.
Final design/films layout is done at agency, which expects from you .doc, this 
is not what you can change in the chain.
Than I take (existing) PowerPoint presentation , which is usually from 8MB to 
15MB in size.  This PPT presentation needs to be opened, modified, and saved 
again in .ppt format.
In process of modification, I may need to copy some fragments from Word (text, 
tables) or Excel (tables, charts) and paste those fragments into PPT. And 
save it in .ppt as well.
Have I said before that Cyrillic language should be supported for all those 
operations, and resulting text should be readbale when youopen those files in 
native MS Office later?..  :-))

|
|  > well, kdelibs+kdebase have the same size as 57 packages required to
|  > install Gnome desktop, while:
|  > a)  GNOME Desktop (panel+terminal+control_center+Nautilus) lacks Web
|  > Browser.
|  >
|  > Adding Mozilla results in additional 15MB-20MB of disk space.
|  > Besides, Mozilla is not very well intergrated with GNOME (to say the
|  > truth: not integrated at all), and adding Galeon results in one more
|  > package installed, and it is still not 100% integrate dinto GNOME.
|
|  The web browser situation is ugly. A sane, properly-supported desktop
|  operating system needs to choose a single browser engine (khtml or
|  gecko), if not a single browser shell. Of the options:
|
|   - Mozilla doesn't have native UI (Qt/GTK) and is too complex
|   - Galeon is too complex
|   - Phoenix is not native UI
|   - Epiphany is not finished
|   - Konqueror is too complex and is tightly bound to having
|     KDE desktop running

It seems Apple managed to separate it (KHTML engine) from Qt (for their safari 
browser).
I am curious though wether someone managed to build "QT-less" versions of 
Konqueror (or other KHTML-based browser) on Linux.
Probably, this can answer some questions.

As about Mozilla/Galeon/Phoenix: in my opinion, the only real option left to 
us (in case we want *fast* and *native* browser for Linux, either for 
GTK/GNOME or Qt/KDE), is to fork Mozilla codebase and strip down *unneeded* 
features.
I haven't seen Phoenix in work, but it can be that Phoenix is a good 
foundation for such task. 

|
|  Blah. Nitpicking about GNOME vs. KDE here seems to miss the point
|  given that we don't have even one fully satisfactory option.  Right
|  now Epiphany seems most likely to combine simple UI + native widgets +
|  running fine under any environment + handling most web sites, but
|  konqueror or other khtml-based browser could certainly get there too
|  if motivated.

Out of curiousity, what is  Epiphany?

[...]
|
|  Havoc
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-- 
Best Regards,

Vadim Plessky
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