Re: Food for thought: Why (and how) should KDE and Gnome unite?

[Peter Hawkins <dph-man iname com>]

Hi there...
Adam Rotaru wrote:

>   HOW they could merge.
>   That's a tough question. Technically, I see a number of possibilities:
>  1) since both are GPLed, an gorup can take both, and merge them. But it's
>      very likely that such a group would consist of individuals who are
>      already involved with one of the projects.
> >2) gradually, more and more components become common (like font handling,
>      screen savers, themes, internalization, etc.), and both projects
>      focus on their strenghts.

This is where we should aim. A good starting point would  be a) those things you
mention, and b) adding a thin infrastructure to allow KDE apps to run in the
gnome environment happily, or gnome apps to run in the KDE environment happily.
Perhaps what we need to be thinking of here is format, interface, and protocol
compatibility. For example, why can't I run the kde file manager and drag and
drop files onto my gnome panel? I should be able to. Why can't I open my gwp
document in KWord? Can I embed a gnumeric  document in KWord? This is the sort of
cross-desktop interoperability we need, and we need to talk to the kde folks
about it in an enthusiastic way.
So we need to basically wrap more functionality in standardised corba interfaces,
so kde applets can run in the gnome panel, etc. etc., applications can embed...
We need to get this all happening with the KDE folks as well.

>  3) prominant leaders from the two communities agree to converge and
>      merge (not very likely).
>  4) on of the projects gives up and acknowledges the other (extremly
>      unlikely, having in mind their considerable effort devoted)
>   I see (2) as the most probable, (3) the less coslty.
>
>   Qt vs GTK+
>   The main problem, which can't be overcome by 'gradual convergence', is
> the widget set. Which is better? Qt is supposedly better supported, now
> also free (but not GPLed, which is still perceived as a problem), while
> GTK+ is GPLed.  In nay case, changing the underlying widget set
> means a lof of recoding.

So let's avoid this problem. Make the desktop environments compatible. Make the
widget sets up to programmer. This might leave inconsistency within the desktop,
but nothing is as bad as having two complete desktops.

>   Balance.
>   KDE and Gnome seems to be quite balanced in terms of their
> goals and functionality.  They aim at the same goals. The set of common
> features in much larger than the differences. They have about roughly
> support. That renders 'natural software selection' more difficult.
>
>   Recently, many users expressed their view that KDE and Gnome should
> merge (lus Linus, but he reportedly is not a GUI user).

Linus is god. Don't mess with Linus. :-) He say merge, we damn well merge...

> But users
> expressing views, without action, will not change things.
> So we need actions?
>
>   What next?

Common formats, common protocols, common interfaces. CORBA can help here, by
providing interfaces behind which the application does not know whether it is
talking to KDE or GNOME.

Simple things like drag and drop, panel applets, document embedding (that's not
so simple, but I don't think either KDE or GNOME implement it yet, so it's
probably a wonderful place to start).

Encourage more applications to use cross-toolkit programming methods (like
netscape can. I know netscape has gone GTK+, but there's no reason why it
*couldn't* implement QT with a common source code architecture. This is what we
should aim for.). Maybe we should encourage apps to be written using a higher
level toolkit like wxWindows or VDK. (not sure if either of these have QT, but
they could). I'm particularly thinking of the more important applications, like
gnumeric,KOffice, gwp and friends. Of course, this would mean a rewrite, but a
rewrite is perhaps a good thing in this case.
Certainly we should share common file formats between KDE and GNOME apps.


You get the gist...

:-)
Peter

>
>
>   If you have any meaningful ideas on this, I (we?)'d like to hear them!
> Maybe send them to the
>    gnome-kde-list@gnome.org.
>
>   ...and now I'm running away from the flames
>                                              Adam