KDE and Gnome shuld be closer.

[Kevin Forge <forge jamweb net>]

There are several levels of Cooperation that should exist between KDE
and Gnome
if I am to be happy.

1: Cut and Paste : X dose most of the work and I have herd it's cool
between 
	the Desktops

2: Drag and Drop : XDnD.  It's a done deal since XDnD is supported all
the way
	by both teams ( and Troll Tech )

3: Corba : Still pretty much up in the air.  Most people don't even get
what
	Corba dose completely but from what I grasp it's only used by the 
	file manager and Panel in Gnome and by the Office suite in KDE.
	They both use different implementations though.  At one time they both
	used Mico but Gnome has decided Mico has limitations they cannot live
	with.  Hopefully the solution they are building will still work
together
	with the KDE/Mico setup ( I don't know enough about corba to say much
	on the likelihood of that ).

4: Themes : KDE supports Themes.  Gnome supports Themes.  They both
however let
	you modify different things to different levels.  Right now you can
have
	all the Widgets in all you Gnome apps turned into a nice wood grain
	or a gaudy purple with yellow dots.  I only ask that the config tools 
	inter operate.  I.e. Those few items that both desktops let you
configure 
	you should be able to set using either of the tools.  What this means
	is that if you change your color scheme in Gnome, any KDe apps you have 
	will also adopt the same colors.  Also the apps need to gracefully 
	ignore those settings they do not allow ( The widget pics mentioned 
	above ).

5: Document formats.  Well for the most part they do not seam to be
inventing
	any proprietary formats ( how proprietary can something be when 
	everybody has access to the source code ? ).  XML, TEX, HTML etc...

6: Help files.  This is a part of the Doc format situation.  Basically
the 
	user with a KDE desktop should not be in anyway impaired from reading 
	the Gnome Docs with the KDE reader.  I think both are using basic 
	HTML or the SGML subset ( I may be wrong )

7: Config files.  What confuses people is not that there is a text file
to 
	edit when you want to get down and dirty.  The confusion comes from
	the ~/.*rc files or whatever using vastly different syntax from 
	one app to the next.

8: Look and Feel.  It doesn't matter so much how each desktop looks. 
What 
	is worrying is if the apps use vastly different keystrokes.  I.e. 
	ctrl+C is as good a cut command as any so lets all use that 
	( hypothetical example since ctrl+C is actually used for copy :).  
	This also ties into the config wish above in that KDE 1.1 ( in CVS )
	has a tool for	setting the shortcut keys for most everything.  This 
	is also configurable in Gnome so how about both tools affecting the 
	other ?

9: Window Managers.  KDE comes with KWM and has a spec for writing KDE 
	compliant WMs.  Gnome doesn't care much about what WM you use but it
	also has a spec that WMs must fit to reap max benefits.  At my last 
	count there were 2 KDE WMs and 4 Gnome WMs.  1 of those is BOTH KDE
	and Gnome compliant.  Why not move more that way ?

With these things in place it will not mater weather you use KDE or
Gnome as
far as ability to get work done is concerned.  It will make the "mix and
match"
option more attractive by far.  So much so that distributions might mix
them in.
Both desktops claim to be targeted at least as much to the novice user
as the
hacker.  My hope is that the differences between them will amount to
things the
simple user couldn't care less about.  I.e. Programing Language, toolkit
and a
Controversy which should not even be MENTIONED on this list )