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

[Kevin Forge <forgeltd usa net>]

Adam Rotaru wrote:
>
>   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.
> 
>   What next?
> 
>   If you have any meaningful ideas on this, I'd like to hear them!

If in the end the toolkit an application uses has an impact on anything 
but the programers "hacking enjoyment" and memory usage on the users 
machine then KDE and Gnome have achieved nothing.  

Switching Gnome to QT is the same as abandoning Gnome.  Likewise 
switching KDE to GTK.  The reason is that quite a bit of work in most 
apps is done by the toolkit and many would need to be rewritten from 
scratch to get it to work.  I.e. It would be easier for the KOffice 
team to just contribute to GNumeric rather than make KSpread a GTK+/C
app.

The areas of interaction that actually matter are as follows.  With my
take on what can be done.  Take these comments from an end user 
perspective and see what could be done to make the feel of these goals
appear on screen.

1: Cut and past:- I have herd that this works.  Anybody running a 
combo desktop can confirm ?

2: Drag and Drop:-  Done deal.

3: Corba:- I have herd that Corba is Corba so it doesn't matter what 
orb each project uses.  Except that loading 2 must be heavier than
loading one.

4: GUI configuration/Themes:-  Simply having the same thumbing ability
supported is irrelevant.  What really matters is that the config tool
for each desktop can manipulate the setting s for the other in a user
transparent manner.  This means that if you set KDE to blue the Gnome 
apps will also be blue.  

This can probably be achieved since both environments manipulate text 
files to save these settings.

5: ShortCut keys:- If ctrl+X is cut then it should be cut on both 
desktops.  Confusion isn't having odd key assignments.  It's having
multiple key assignments.

This ties into point 4 since the keymaps are configurable.

6: Menu item placements:- If both use the same mechanism for managing
menu items fine ( KDE uses directory tree with *.kdelnk files ). 
If that's not happening then simply having each transparently grab 
the structure of the other is good enough.  the way KDE grows a 
"RedHat apps" tree on a RedHat system.

7: Document formats:- KOffice is using XML for most stuff ( All ? ).
If Gnome dose the same I'll be happy.

There is more but I guess you can figure out where this is going.

>   ...and now I'm running away from the flames

What ?  Me, Flame ?