[Wylug-discuss] KDE

[david powell]

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 12:10 am, Smylers wrote:
> david powell writes:
> > i use kde ,
>
> Thanks for replying.
>
> > no chance of me doing a talk on it though
>
> Oh, why not?  Not even a short demo?
transport , i live in north wales and bringing computer, projector , etc on 
the train is not my idea of fun (its a 19" server case and big ) 
im not verry good infront of an audiance anyway 
>
> > there are a lot of kde apps  koffice , kmail, kstars , konversation
> > ,too many to list
>
> Exactly -- if there are too many for you even to list, there are
> definitely too many for me to try out just to see if I like them!  What
> I liked about the article I linked to is that it didn't try to be
> comprehensive or to cover the basics of things, just to highlight some
> specific features of some apps, where those features are particularly
> novel or nifty.
amorok is a good music player , use it here listening to internet radio
all day long , but reading the article it is true of a lot of kde apps 

not trying to start a flame war here it seems to me that gnome has set 
standards to gnome libs , form some developers that i have spoken to, this
prevents them trying diferent things or stops them implimenting some feature 
because it would need a change to a lib , kde on the other hand is not so 
strict on that , so new ideas and functions can be developed and implimented 

i help with the development of kttsd the text to speech for kde
currently both kde and gnome accessibility devs are trying to come up with a 
solution to the screen reader problem , so we are working on a comman speech 
subsystem that should allow for both kde and gnome accessibility users to 
have the same capabilities in eather

kttsd on one hand allows speech for system events such as new mail , or 
desktop selection , and can read out some web pages and document files for 
you also , again this is custamisable so not only the message for an event be 
a user defined one but a lot more is possible

kate a text editor is cool if your into programming it will do correct code 
high lighting for C,C++,python and some others 
 
the apps are easy to configure and still have plenty of misc options that 
allow you to personalize the application 

its not written but most kde apps try to give the users a choice where posable 
for how they want to configure it , wether it be font size or a view profile 
although quite often theres noting wrong with the default settings for average 
users , but the choice is there

>
> > i guess the bigest advantage i find with kde is the customisation
> > options for most of the windowmanager functions
>
> I don't buy that.  In terms of what I want to achieve with a computer
> there's a list which includes things like dealing with e-mail, browsing
> the web, programming, and listening to music.  Customizing my window
kmail for mail , configureable  mail filter options , will cope with secure 
servers like pop3 access to gmail , 
programming , well theres kdevelop and qt for gui stuff , all the usual 
programming tools , and 2 realy good editors , kate and kwrite 

customising your window manager may not be high on your list 
but customisation of kate view profiles makes editing code as good as in a ide 
i use this for editing and writing both C++ and python code 

> manager definitely isn't on that list: it isn't an end in itself.  Even
> _using_ a window manager isn't an end in itself, but a means to doing
> one of the other tasks, so _customizing_ a window manager is 2 steps
> removed from actually being useful!

well ok , but the look and feel is changable , all the usual stuff like icon 
sets , fonts and font sizes , desktop backgrounds etc , sound scheems 
things that just make it more personal , may not be verry functional 
or top of things on your list , then there are other things like application 
preferences , thease can help a lot and means that in a lot of cases your
not stuck to a set default method , shortcut keys can be defined in most apps
if you dont like the default ones that is , you can change them 
ok so it may take some time to play with , but thats if you want to play with 
them 
and as you seem to like the console then you would probabaly use keyboard 
shortcuts more than i would 

>
> My ideal window manager would work exacty the way that I want it to
> without me having to perform any customizing at all.  And if it does
> that, I wouldn't mind if it had no customization options at all.
>
> > konqueror  kdes file manager and web browser is good ,
>
> But in what way specifically?  What are the features that make it good?

konqueror , well its kool , not over clutted , easy to use , works well in 
http, ftp , and as a file manager , one of the features that i use often in
konqueror is the ^ button   besides the normal fwd and back buttons 
the ^ takes you up one level so if you are surfing  say 
http://www.whipy.demon.co.uk/snapshot15.png the ^ button takes you 
up one directory level  good on some sites or when you have been given a link 
like above that opens a picture file the ^ would take you back to the home 
page where the back takes you to the previous page viewed that may not be the 
same , and  he same with directories on ftp or local file views 

auto file previews on local files gives you a preview of the contents before 
opening so for text files you can although small see the contents in the 
normal icon view of the file , jpg and video files shows a preview of the 
image or first frame , 
and if a application is installed for that file type it will preview or open 
it using that application 
i did 2 screenshots of my desktop
http://www.whipy.demon.co.uk/snapshot15.png
and showing the filemanager previews 
http://www.whipy.demon.co.uk/snapshot16.png
showing konqueror in web browser mode (and showing amorok playlist tab even 
though amorok is running in another window the play list is correct for that 
and can ether control there or in its native window  )
although its fair to say im using custom icons other settings , but the 
information displayed is the same without the customisation that i have used 

>
> Currently I don't really use a file manager at all: I can work very well
> at a Bash prompt in a terminal (talking of terminals, one of the things
> that most irritated me the last time I used KDE was that Shift+Ins in a
> Konsole doesn't insert the X selection) and so haven't felt the need to
i right click and paste it there  , this seems to be that the shift+insert or 
ctrl+v   is sent to the application running in the console to allow a program 
running in the console to recive all keyboard sequences  , im not a big 
shortcut key user and use the mouse , but i think you may be able to set one 
for it 
  
> use a file manager -- except for browsing music files and
> drag-and-dropping them to an XMMS playlist window.

amorok is one of kde's media players for music , it works well , in konqueror
clicking on the music file will open it with one of the installed players , 
the file type for a file may have more than one program that will open it 
and there is provision to specify the one of your preferance , so no need to 
drag and drop , just click and play 

>
> And I'm very happy with Firefox as a web browser.  What nice features
> does Konqueror provide that I'm missing out on?
>
konqueror is more integrated into kde than firefox or netscape can be 
it uses all the netscape plugins that both firefox and netscape use so its 
surfing abilities are the same , i find it easyer to surf with than the 
others and well no popups eather , and has  good cookie management 
section 
 
> > http://www.kde.org/  is a good place to find out more about it
>
> Except it isn't really for the kind of information that I'm trying to
> find out.  It's quite a big website, and has lots of information on it,
> but nearly all of the information is either irrelevant to me (because
> its aimed at developers, for example, or it's explaining things I
> already know such as what free software is).
>
guess it would be better to know what types of apps you need to use , then i 
could of been more specific as to what programs are avalable 
> I don't want to read the complete documentation for hundreds of programs
> that I'm currently not using -- at least, not yet anyway!  I first want
> to discover what the nifty features are to see if it's worth spending
> time investigating further.
nifty features , well there are probablay more than i would mention as having 
used kde for some time they are normal to me and what i would expect from it 
>
> Smylers
dave