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             New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)
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                         Programmers wanted!

Motivation
----------

Unix popularity grows thanks to the free variants, mostly Linux. But still a
consistant, nice looking free desktop-environment is missing. There are
several nice either free or low-priced applications available, so that
Linux/X11 would almost fit everybody needs if we could offer a real GUI.

Of course there are GUI's. There is the Commond Desktop Environment (much
too exansive), Looking Glas (not too expensive but not really the solution),
and several free X-Filemanagers that are almost GUI's. Moxfm for example is
very well done, but unfortunately it is based on Motif.  Anyway, the
question is: What is a GUI? What should a GUI be?

First of all, since there are a lot of missunderstandings on this topic,
what is NOT a GUI:

- the X-Window-System is NOT a GUI. It's what its name says: A Window system

- Motif is NOT a GUI. They tried to create a GUI when they made Motif, but
  unfortunately they couldn't really agree, so they released Motif as
  Widget-Library with a Window-Manager. Much later they completed Motif with
  the CDE, but too late, since Windows already runs on the majority of
  desktops.

- Window-managers are NOT GUI's. They are (better: should be) small programs
  that handle the windows. It's not really the idea to hack a lot of stuff
  into them.

IMHO a GUI should offer a complete, graphical environment. It should allow a
users to do his everyday tasks with it, like starting applications, reading
mail, configuring his desktop, editing some files, delete some files, look
at some pictures, etc.  All parts must fit together and work together. A
nice button with a nice "Editor"-icon isn't not at all a graphical user
environment if it invokes "xterm -e vi". Maybe you have been disappointed
long time ago too, when you installed X with a nice window manager, clicked
on that beautiful "Help"-Icon ... chrk chrk (the hard disk)...an ugly,
unsuable, weird xman appeared on the desktop :-(

A GUI for endusers
------------------

The idea is NOT to create a GUI for the complete UNIX-system or the
System-Administrator. For that purpose the UNIX-CLI with thousands of tools
and scripting languages is much better. The idea is to create a GUI for an
ENDUSER. Somebody who wants to browse the web with Linux, write some letters
and play some nice games.

I really believed that is even yet possible with Linux until I configured my
girlfriends Box. Well, I didn't notice anymore that I work with lots of
different kind of menues, scrollbars and textwidgets. I already know that
some widgets need to be under the mouse when they should get the keyevents,
some sliders wants the middle mouse for dragging and some textwidgets only
want emacs-bindings and don't understand keys like "pos1" or "end". And
selecting some text is different everywere, too. Even the menues and buttons
(for exampel Xaw, Fvwm, XForms, Motif) behave completely different.

One word to the Athena-Widgets: Although there are a few nice applications
available that uses these "widgets" we should really get rid of them.
Thinking that "Athena is a widget-library" is a similar missunderstanding
like "X is a GUI". Athena is an very old example how widget libraries could
be implemented with Xlib and Xt. It's more or less a online-documentation
for Widget-Set-Programmers, but not a tool for application-programmers.
Unfortunately, the old Unix problem, a so good online-documentation that
people used it for applications.

So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look&feel for
all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is
different from elder attempts.

Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in
source and price for free software development. Check out
                        http://www.troll.no

The stuff is called "Qt" and is really a revolution in programming X. It's
an almost complete, fully C++ Widget-library that implementes a slightly
improved Motif look and feel, or, switchable during startup, Window95.

The fact that it is done by a company (Troll Tech) is IMO a great advantage.
We have the sources and a superb library, they have beta testers. But they
also spend their WHOLE TIME in improving the library. They also give great
support. That means, Qt is also interesting for commercial applications. A
real alternative to the terrible Motif :) But the greatest pro for Qt is the
way how it is programmed. It's really a very easy-to-use powerfull
C++-library.

Qt is also portable, yet to Windows95/NT, but you do not have to worry about
that. It's very easy to use UNIX/X specific things in programming, so that
porting to NT is hardly possible :-)

I really recommand looking at this library. It has IMO the power to become
the leading library for free software development. And it's a way to escape
the TCL/TK monsters that try to slow down all our processors and eat up our
memory...

It's really time yet to standarize the desktop somewhat. It's nonsense to
load 10 different widgets into memory for the same task.
Imagine this desktop:
   - fvwm (own widgets)
   - rxvt (own widgets)
   - tgif (own widgets)
   - xv (own widgets)
   - ghostview (athena widgets)
   - lyx (xforms widgets)
   - xftp (motif widgets)
   - textedit (xview widgets)
   - arena (own widgets)

One may argue that a usual UNIX-Box has enough memory to handle all these
different kind of widgets. Even if this might be correct, the really
annoying thing is, that all these widgets (menus, buttons, scrollbars, etc.)
behave slightly different. And this isn't only an academic example, I've
really seen such desktops :-}

I know we couldn't get rid of this chaos at once, but my dream is a
coexistance between Motif and Qt.

The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)
----------------------------------

I don't have the time to do this all alone (also since LyX is my main
project). But a thing like a Desktop Environment can easily be cut into lots
of parts. There is very probably a part for you, too!  If you want to learn
some X-programming, why not doing a small, neat project for the KDE? If you
know others who like to programm something, please pretend them from writing
the 1004th tetris games or the 768th minesweeper clone ;-) Think we also
have enough XBiffs yet...

So here is my project list so far. Probably there are even more things to do
that would fit great into the KDE. It's a very open project.

- Panel:

  The basic application. Run's as FvwmModule (at the beginning). Offers a
  combination between Windows95 and CDE. I think about a small taskbar at
  the bottom and a kind of CDE-panel on the top of the screen. The panel has
  graphical icon menus on the left (similar to GoodStuff) to launch
  applications, 4 buttons in the middle to switch to other virtual desktops
  and few icons for often needed applications on the right. There is for
  example a mail-icon that also indicates new mail, a wastebasket to open
  the delete-folder (that also indicates when it isn't empty and is capable
  of drag'n'drop). Maybe a analog clock with date at the very right. Also a
  nice special icon for exiting the environment or locking the screen. All
  the stuff is completly configurable via GUI. I'm also thinking about
  solutions, that only available applications can be installed on the
  desktop and that new applications appear on the desktop automatically.

  I started to work on this panel, but would of course love some help. There
  are also lot of smaller things to do, like a tool to chose a background
  pixmap (for each virtual desktop) etc.

  Also nice icons are needed!

- Filemanager

  Another major application inside the KDE. The idea is not to create a
  powerful high-end graphical bash-replacement (like tkdesk tries to be),
  but a nice looking easy-to-use filemanager for simple tasks. Simple tasks
  are mainly deleting some files, copying some files, copying some files on
  the disk, starting applications by clicking on a file (for example
  ghostview for postscript files or xli for gifs, etc).

  I'm thinking about nice windows, one for each directory, that shows icons
  for every file. It should be possible to drag files around (either copy or
  move), even between different windows. Another important point is the
  support of the floppy-disk, so that mounting/umounting is done
  user-transparent.

  Dragging of icons should be done in a nice way, that means moving around a
  special window (see Qt's xshape example), NOT like xfm or xfilemanager by
  setting another monochrome bitmap for the cursor.

  So it will also be possible to put files as icons on the desktop. This is
  IMO a very nice feature. Since applications are launched by the panel,
  it's even clear that icons are real data-objects. With fvwm-1 and the
  FvwmFileMgr it wasn't really clear wether an icon is yet a file or an
  iconified window.

  Drag'n'drop inside a Qt application isn't really difficult.
  The filemanager is IMO a very nice and not too time consuming project.
  Who wants?

- mail client

  A really comfortable mailclient. IMO the most comfortable mailclient for X
  is yet XF-Mail. And the author is willing to port it to Qt when the
  KDE-project will start! But he asks for some assitance (for example for
  coding the small popups, etc.)

- easy texteditor

  Very small but important project. An editor that fits the needs of those
  who have to edit a textfile once in a month and didn't find the time yet
  to learn vi (and don't have the time to wait for x-emacs to start, and
  don't have the memory to use a motif-static-nedit, and don't have the
  cpu-power and memory to use a tk-monster like tkedit,...)

: Motivation
: ----------

: Unix popularity grows thanks to the free variants, mostly Linux. But still a
: consistant, nice looking free desktop-environment is missing. There are
: several nice either free or low-priced applications available, so that
: Linux/X11 would almost fit everybody needs if we could offer a real GUI.

Matthias,

        I think that nice looking window managers are wonderful, but a
more worthwhile project for programmers in the Linux community would be to
create a FreeCDE system. I personally would much rather have a unified
print and drag-and-drop API than another pretty window manager.

BTW: I hope you will consider porting LyX over to Qt in the future, and I
hope that The Gimp will also join it in moving to more open libraries.

: :          -------------------------------------------
: :          New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)
: :          -------------------------------------------
: :              
: :                      Programmers wanted!

: : Motivation
: : ----------

: : Unix popularity grows thanks to the free variants, mostly Linux. But still a
: : consistant, nice looking free desktop-environment is missing. There are
: : several nice either free or low-priced applications available, so that
: : Linux/X11 would almost fit everybody needs if we could offer a real GUI.

: Matthias,

:       I think that nice looking window managers are wonderful, but a
: more worthwhile project for programmers in the Linux community would be to
: create a FreeCDE system. I personally would much rather have a unified
: print and drag-and-drop API than another pretty window manager.

I'm not talking about yet-another window manager. I'm talking about
an Qt-based environment similar to the CDE. Qt yet doesn't have
a drag-and-drop API. I'm not sure when it will come. But of course
this would be a nice project. Join and do that API!  
(as a sideeffect and for testing purpose maybe also the filemanager
 comes out...)

: BTW: I hope you will consider porting LyX over to Qt in the future, and I
: hope that The Gimp will also join it in moving to more open libraries.

: Kevin

Greets,

  As far as I can remember Qt is free only for free software development.
So if a company wants to create a product on Linux, she'll have the
choice between:

1. Motif
2. Qt

Since both of them are Commercial products, it'll use Motif (standard).
Even if the Qt API is better...

--
Lokh.

In article <544rn3$...@rigel.tm.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de>, Anselm

Clayton L. Hines

A GUI is an absolut personal decision. I take what I think it is nixe
and usefull. I expect you writing a "Kool" program so far you think that
it is "Kool". But THAT is the problem! A really great GUI does not force
the user to use a special look an feel! But all existing GUIs do this.
And your project will create the next one!

A really great GUI does not define weather a button is rectangular or
round!

It must be possible to change the outfit of the GUI like the colors of
the desktop. If you want to write something great, write that!

Beside that the process of creating a program and using a program must
be the same! A GUI-program should be an example of how this program
could look like and the user has to be able to change the outfit at all.
It must be possible to move the buttons to other places in a dialog-box.
It must be possible the create new different dialog-boxes with the
dialog-elements from the existing. It must be possible to join
dialog-boxes and frames in the way the user likes it. If you want to
write something great, write that!

-- bis später...
 - Sascha         ---<~>=( http://www.ping.de/sites/aibon/ )=<~>---

In article <3269E4E0.4F2BA...@aibon.ping.de>,
Sascha Ziemann  <s...@aibon.ping.de> wrote:

So, a generalized GUI makes life a lot easier and let's you focus on
the really important part of using a program: Make the program what
you want, not make it look like you want.

bis sp"atestens ... Uli

(What I left unsaid is that preferences need to function across ALL
of the applications that talk to your UI; if the user makes buttons
look like hot dogs, then _every_ button should look like a hot dog,
not just the buttons in the app that they just called up preferences
in.)

When I (finally) convinced my wife that fighting with WP-5.1 was no
longer worth the effort, that she could get better font support using
WP-6.1 and Winders-3.1, she insisted that the background be blue, since
that was what she was used to.  I had no choice but to make all the
active windows have a blue background -- she didn't mind, but I thought
it looked ugly.  It should have been possible to set WP's background to
blue, and leave the others alone.  Same thing here.

--

In article <326D8363.6DA23...@lehigh.edu>,

You wouldn't go to a car seller and say: *I want a car with the
gas-pedal on the left and the tachometer in the luggage-boot*, wouldn't
you 8-) ? But on some things you are definitely right. Some little things
should be configurable by the user: colors, for example. Maybe,
color-blind people would need to change them. And that's another reason
for the usefulness of GUIs. If you need to change the color, it should
be take effect for every program that you use.

Maybe I'm going to far-off of this thread. I just wanted to make
clear, that a standardized GUI would be very useful for the end-users.

CU ... Uli