[Wylug-discuss] KDE

[Smylers]

david powell writes:

> On Tuesday 03 January 2006 9:29 am, Smylers wrote:
> 
> > * All the individuals who make neutral apps just happen to have
> >   separately chosen to be Gnome users, for some reason.
> 
> there are a lot of indipendant apps that use gtk , but find that the
> reson they are indipendent is often because they will not be included
> within gnome

I was more thinking of cross-platform apps, such as Vim and Firefox
(which both work with several different toolkits, on different OSes).
For whatever reason the Linux version of each is GTK, not QT (or even
versions available in both).

> kde tries to give some support for apps written that use it , hence
> the rather large list of them at http://www.kde-apps.org/

Thanks for that information and link -- I was unaware of both.

> > I can't imagine there's any chance I'm going to switch from Vim in
> > the near future!
> 
> you seem to use apps that you are used to 

For the things I spend most of my time using I've bothered to learn some
tools really well.  This generally fits in well with the Unix way of
having separate interchangeable components for separate tasks.

> but today there are different editors with a lot more features,

I'm sceptical: whenever I've been faced with something else for typing
text into, I've found it to be missing many, many features of Vim.

> guess the only way to take advantage of those is to , try, learn, and
> take the bit by the teeth and give them a go , 

I'm also lazy: my alternative way is to post requests to mailing lists
trying to coax other people to telling me about them.

> as an example vim could if you file feature requests , or code it
> yourself also include the new features of some of the others now
> available

Please could you give me some example of such features?

> but after a point it no longer becomes vim as you know it , and can
> upset a lot of users that like it as it is  ,

Vim is still being developed.  It has traditionally coped quite well
with finding ways of squeezing in many new features while finding ways
of being compatible with the expectations of existing users (and VI
users).

> not trying to be harsh here , but you have the chioce , continue using
> the apps you are used to and not get the new features or learn new
> ones that do 

Indeed.  But obviously it only makes sense to me to bother doing that if
the features I'm missing out on are sufficiently juicy.  And it seems
most sensible to look first at switching the bits that I'm currently
less than satisfied with -- and at the moment that includes my window
manager, desktop environment, the "bits inbetween" my main applications,
and the apps I only use occasionally.

> > I wasn't really asking.  With the main day-to-day apps I do stuff in
> > I'm pretty happy with them, so unlikely to switch those.  But things
> > like the "You want to overwrite the left picture with the one on the
> > right" are so obvious when you mention them that I want them now!
> 
> true , but you got to remeber that the overwrite function is true of kde 
> applications

Sure; I appreciate that.

> if using say, vim then that does not use the kde calls so it will work
> in the way vim does at the moment

Yup, and that's the thing I was trying to get at above that's made me
cautious of KDE: 'neutral' apps such as Vim seem to be more likely to do
things the Gnome way!

kate and other kde applications on

> bash maybe say 
> 
> cd /home/user/music
> ls
> look to see if the you want to play is there
> and say 
> xmms (options if needed) ( flie to play)
> ok 

Nah.  I'd do xmms -e ~/music/whatever, and be able to use Tab completion
to avoid the separate ls step and to type most of the filename for me.

> but it can be just as easy to have a file manager open , in the dir
> you have the music
> and just one mouse click on the file you want to play 

But it's a click to open the file manager, one to get to my music
directory, then another couple to navigate to the artist (after lots of
scrolling, probably) and album directory within it, before we even get
to that click.

That's about the same as using the 'open' feature of the music player
app (possibly a little slower), and I know that I can generally type
faster than that!

> amorok , you can just start it and it will search you drive for any
> files to play , you can sort them and use it that way , so you dont
> need to  worry about where it is 

Yeah, that does look good.

> gnome for me was the same last year as when i first tried it about 8
> years ago , little seems to have changed (although i know things have)

Yes, lots of things have changed in Gnome -- in particular several
features that I used to use have been removed!  But also lots of stuff
is slicker now.

> kde like gnome is a big window manager and can use alot of system
> resauces

Yeah, that's what I meant earlier when I was concerned about having both
loaded -- but Anne reports it isn't a problem.

Smylers
-- 
May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a
difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.