Porting apps...

[Niclas Anderberg <nicke ostgota lu se>]

I am not very into Gnome (yet), but some things surprise me about the
development (i might be totally wrong). I don't understand why you go the
KDE way and try to make new apps for every occasion, instead of taking
VERY good and tested GPL apps and just add gnome support (maybe tinker a
little with the interface).

I know you want a gnome look and feel to all applications, but why not
hack the user interface of for instance knews, ddd etc. instead of writing
ALL of the application from scratch. It would save a whole lot of time,
and would sure produce more stable applications. I also know that it is
more fun writing an application from scratch, but if you guys want to beat
KDE this is the right way to do it in my opinion.

You see, i am already quite comfortable with my apps as they are. I have
used pretty much the same tools for my basic needs for 4-5 years. I am
sure as h*ll not going to change my habits and go for a tool that is in
alpha stage, and i would be afraid to use half the time (since i don't
develop gnome stuff i want my emailprogram to work 100%). And lets face
it, for all those products to become stable you will have to wait years.
KDE got the basic tools stable pretty quick, because they made them
themselves, but there seems to be less control in gnome (which is good in
some aspects), which will delay the tools we _need_ to use.

1) Make all the common windowmanagers (fvwm, windowmaker, twm, afterstep
for instance) gnomeaware. There you have a _huge_ leap over kde, since to
be able to utilise all the features of kde you need to use kwm which sucks
bigtime.

2) Make the most basic favourite apps, like knews, xemacs, netscape,
x11amp etc. gnome aware. This will totally kill KDE in my opinion.

3) Now you can begin to make tools of your own, which may be ALPHA for a
whole year, noone will care since their old tools are already gnome aware,
and they will only switch to the new application if it is really good. But
they sure won't use KDE. :P

Just my little success-strategy, and if you got the manpower i am pretty
sure it would work.

/Nick