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KDE GUI

"KDE 2.0 Development" Is Online (And OPL) 98

Posted by timothy from the or-wait-a-few-days-for-the-print-version dept.
kupolu writes: "'KDE 2.0 Development,' a new book being published under the Open Publication License, is now available in full online. Another example of Open-ness at work. A quote from the story says, 'Since the book is released under the Open Publication License, it may be modified and redistributed online, which means that the book can be maintained (fixed, updated, expanded etc.) in the style of a free software project. In this spirit, volunteer translation of the book into five other languages has already begun.'" The book seems to be written in a nice, straightforward way. It starts off by explaining the motivations of the KDE project, but the bulk of the book is a combination of explanations and code examples covering everything from KParts to Mesa and OpenGL to multimedia integration. Happily, this book also serves in part as a user advocate -- programmers are reminded about the importance of readable dialogues and system responsiveness. You can go straight to the book, or check out the excellent andamooka project, which hosts the online version of this soon-available-in-print book.
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"KDE 2.0 Development" Is Online (And OPL) More

"KDE 2.0 Development" Is Online (And OPL)

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  • Re:Now for a free Windows port (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, I heard from people in some companies that I know who have bought QT Windows version for much lower prices - I suggest you contact them directly. This ofcourse depends on how many licenses you buy etc...

    The question is: Do you really need the QT for Windows? if you're developing A Windows only application - that I wouldn't suggest for you to use it - there are other better solutions for that.

    On the other hand - if you're developing Windows applications and you're going to target other non Windows OS's (Linux, *BSD, Tru64 etc..) - then QT is worth every penny - but I suggest for you to negotiate the prices (specially if you're coming from a big company)..

    And as for support - I think they got a support center in US (if I'm not mistaken) and they have great documentation.

  • Keep in mind (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It seems to me that there are not nearly enough quality books on KDE & Gnome programming in general, and definitely not enough for KDE itself. Soon, we are going to need alot of quality tools to help pull programmers out of their reliance on the LARGE pile of high-quality crutches.

    The transition to an OS world is not going to be won on the desktop alone. The other half of the fight is going to be for the commercial programmers. With the establishment of the Gnome foundation, I was slightly worried that KDE might slow down a little bit.

  • First, off topic: put your money where your sig is :-) (see sig below)

    To the point, the following entry, stolen from Merriam-Webster [m-w.com], shows that the usage of the word "book" is nowhere near as limited as you suggest -- very many of the definitions have nothing to do with paper. Expanding usage to include something like an "online book" hardly seems a stretch.

    That being said, I hate reading books online. Can't do it on the can, can't do it on the train, can't do it walking down the street, can't hold one finger in the index while you quick check to see if you got the right reference, can't flip through 100 pages to find the page on the left side that looked like what you remembered... I could go on, but the point is that it will be a long, long time before the user interface of an online book will compare favorably to that of a print book. IMHO, the only thing an online book has going for it is a text search feature.

    Main Entry: 1 book
    Pronunciation: 'buk
    Function: noun
    Etymology: Middle English, from Old English bOc; akin to Old High German buoh book, Gothic boka letter
    Date: before 12th century
    1 a : a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory b : a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together into a volume c : a long written or printed literary composition d : a major division of a treatise or literary work e : a record of a business's financial transactions or financial condition -- often used in plural <the book s show a profit>
    2 capitalized : BIBLE [slashdot.org] 1
    3 : something that yields knowledge or understanding <the great book of nature> <her face was an open book>
    4 a : the total available knowledge and experience that can be brought to bear on a task or problem <tried every trick in the book> <the book on him is that he can't hit a curveball> b : the standards or authority relevant in a situation <run by the book>
    5 a : all the charges that can be made against an accused person <threw the book at him> b : a position from which one must answer for certain acts : ACCOUNT [slashdot.org] <bring criminals to book>
    6 a : LIBRETTO [slashdot.org] b : the script of a play c : a book of arrangements for a musician or dance orchestra : musical repertory
    7 : a packet of items bound together like a book <a book of stamps> <a book of matches>
    8 a : BOOKMAKER [slashdot.org] b : the bets registered by a bookmaker; also : the business or activity of giving odds and taking bets
    9 : the number of tricks a cardplayer or side must win before any trick can have scoring value
    - bookful /'buk-"ful/ noun
    - in one's book : in one's own opinion
    - in one's good books : in favor with one
    - one for the book : an act or occurrence worth noting
    - on the books : on the records

  • Yeah, but the flipside of KDE being C++-only is that someone who knows C++ can pick up some dead KDE project and run with it; if I find some dead project for GNOME written in, say, TOM I won't have a fscking clue and I'll have to learn TOM. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

    And no, I don't think you deserved to be modded down as a troll.
  • The funny thing is, I've had just the opposite problem with KDE2...and for some reason, many times a segfault in one app will cause a cascade effect, to a point where everything except, of course, the X server dies a horrible death.
  • /* 4. Use whatever you are comfortable with.

    I do.
    */

    Good. So don't give others a hard time for doing the same. =P
  • >1.Go apologize to RMS.

    Hahahaha...I rather think it should be the opposite. RMS and the Free Software zealots were advocating boycotting KDE due to its Qt base. You can thank Open Source people for making Qt free. Now RMS would have you hold KDE accountable for "past transgressions."

    If anyone should be apologizing, it's RMS.
  • Erm, what's the objection?

    Can't stand the fact that you can use QT under pure GPL? Do you require the impure LGPL for some reason?

    Bleh...you probably still hold a grudge against Germans for past transgressions.
  • Well actually gtk+ does have an equivalent - it's in CVS. Look in gdk/linux-fb/.

    You shouldn't feed the troll though. It only grows.

    /mill
  • Just make sure your opinion agrees with the current slashthink.

    For example:
    Gore or Nader = GOOD Bush = BAD Gnome or Red Hat = BAD KDE or Debian = GOOD
  • That's wrong, qt is by default compiled with gl. If you compile yourself and don't have mesa installed: no problem.

    As for ad blocking technology I recommend wwwoffle, it does much more than that (perfect for modem users, but I even have it on my T1 connection)

    Check http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle / [demon.co.uk]
    This should ideally not be at browser level, but earlier (mozilla, netscape, konqueror don't see ads with this)

  • If he is a troll, he must be the damned coolest troll I've ever seen. Bravo!
    # SlapAyoda
    # SlapAyoda@yahoo.com
  • This is great. I can not wait untill the print version of this is available.
  • Big company, small company, whatever. The cost of the license is negligeable compared to the cost of each developer. I'd say it's a winner if it improves developer productivity by 2% or more.

  • uh-leeze. Listen, folks, this is the third or fourth recent high-profile Open Source 'major production release' to dump more core than Exxon.

    Solid as a rock on my box as of beta 2. Perhaps the fact that you are using a POS of a distribution which is built with a non-release, developers-only version of gcc is part of the problem.

  • KDE would be fine if it used GTK+. I object to QY.
  • 1. RMS does more harm than good. He turns people away from Open Source with his ceaseless ranting. He makes all the rest of us look bad. Why doesn't he apologize to us, and to the KDE team for the disgraceful way he acted towards them? Simple answer, his ego will not let him.
    Agreed. I was kidding about that. Perhaps that should have been left out.
    2. KDE applications are programmable using any language that can access the necessary libraries. Instead of whining, why don't you do something about C++ being the only currently supported language? The source is freely available.
    Besides lacking enough "5k1llZ" to undertake that, my understanding was that the QT object model did not lend itself well to non-OOP programming. I may be wrong.
    3. GTK is awful. It may be cross-platform (to a limited extent) but it's a pig to code for. Yes, GIMP is stable on Windows, but that is a testament to the skills of the person porting the code. I'm sure that GTK did nothing but get in his way.
    Agreed.
    I can't respond to your freedom blatherings, as none of it made any sense at all.
    QT is non-free on win32. therefore it sucks to port QT apps to win32. GTK is free on Win32. It may still suck but at least its free.
    How can you say you respect the work of the KDE team when your entire post has been an indirect flame against them?
    It was a flame against QT/TrollTech which is almost the same as KDE (ALMOST).
  • An insightful reply! Thank you my good sir!
  • 2.Realize that KDE doesn't support C/Perl/[insert your favorite language here (besides C++)]" I can't do this since it does support Python so your statement is not true.
    AFAIK... AFAIK!!!! Not supporting C is a big hit against QT.
    4. Use whatever you are comfortable with.
    I do.
  • I guess this means I have to take to drinks for responding to a troll of a troll... :)
  • i think rob is the only gore fan.
  • isn't the point of slashdot to bitch and moan?
    In my post
  • One could consider that offering a GPL version of QT means that if any Windows users are sufficiently motivated, that they could start creating a GPL'd QT for Windows. My expectation is that eventually this will happen. My belief is that TrollTech should follow the model used by GNAT (the GPL release is a year behind the commercial release). But it's their choice.

    If you feel that Windows support is sufficiently important, start the project. (I don't feel motivated, and don't have that kind of knowledge of Windows.)

    P.S.: Which version of windows would you be targeting? Any one you choose would be a limitation. Not picking favorites is probably not feasible.

    P.P.S.: When I said "TrollTech should", I meant that my projections said that they would find this the most favorable course. Actually, I think something a bit closer to the QPL without the platform specific distinctions would be their best choice. They are doing nearly all of the development in house anyway. If they are trying to keep up with Windows system changes, they probably need to be able to incorporate the submitted changes into their commericial product.
    (The idea here is: If you don't sell it, it's free. If you do, then I get a rake-off. And if you want changes to be incorporated into the non-commercial releases, then you have to allow me to include them with my commercial releases.)

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • The problem is if you aren't coming from a big company. And don't expect to get big bucks from the nice new interface that you wrote for the copy program. But Kylix is supposed to solve that. You'll just need to buy one copy for each platform that you develop on. (Of course, you'll have to program it in Pascal...and wait until next year.)

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • I have found RH7.0 to be quite stable. Of course, I've been using the Gnome package rather than their KDE. They were quite up front that the KDE that shipped with RH7.0 was from a beta awhile ago (FWIW, KDE 2.0 final shipped AFTER RH7.0, so they didn't have gobbs of choice here, unless they wanted to hold up shipping time. And Linux 2.4 is ready to be released "soon".)

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.

  • Good (Score:1)

    by Taurine ( 15678 )
    It seems obvious to me that publishing and selling a dead-tree edition of this book is equivalent to selling a binary only version of a free software project. The most you can do with a dead-tree is scribble notes on it, that's not giving back now, is it!

    Stop banging on these guys, they put in the work, they deserve some reward for all the work they have put in! They are letting us all read it on our low resolution displays for free.

    Good work, KDE writer people!
  • blah,,, blah,,,,

    I've lost hope!!!!

    Moderators - you can mod me up or down, my karma will only go down, I get moderated up, yet it is in vain, somehow - my karma remains as it is - It can only go down.... maybe my karma is just too high for the likes of you.

    I am unashamed. Mod Up or Mod Down, only Mods down will affect me, I am lifeless and worthless.

    ROB, Do something, before I change my sig...

    ---
  • Bush = BAD
    O.K., go ahead and defend the idiot son of one of the worst presidents we have ever had. He has been one of the worst governors we have ever had [pwgazette.com] (and Texas has had a lot of BAD Governors). Also, as Governor of Texas he has authorized arresting protestors [caller.com]. Slashdot says it is FOR free speech so I don't see where the problem is.

    You just call it "Slashthink" because you cannot conceive that different people have different viewpoints than the narrow one you agree with. If you want a website that will agree with your "viewpoint" Slashdot is not it. Try this one --> Koalition for Konservative Kaucasians [rushlimbaugh.com] (a sanitized website whose intended audience is closet neo-Nazi's, not the overt kind).
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
  • boo? :)

    I do agree that this isn't (what we think of as) a book, but ... what do you propose as a better term? [OTOH, books aren't always written on paper (could be parchment, or vellum, or whatnot) and they *can* be subject to change, only not with the ease of an online version. (addenda can be mailed, next editions reflect changes, etc -- the Mac Bible, for instance, used to and perhaps still comes with a year of updates by mail.)]

    For instance, "Document" is accurate, but just a shade less vague than "artifact" or "thing." There are things like "eBook" but they're to gag on and die.

    In this case, there really is a print version as well; this makes me feel not-so-bad about calling the electronic version a "book" as well.
    I can't think of a replacement that works *better* than book; sort of like a "sedan" has not always meant a certain kind of internal-combustion-engine automobile, I think the term "book" will probably just become more inclusive.

    Suggestions welcome! :)

    timothy
  • KDE2 still crashes every few hours and they're writing docu? A 50-item list of outstanding 'critical' and 'grave' bugs on their bug tracker [kde.org]? Puh-leeze. Listen, folks, this is the third or fourth recent high-profile Open Source 'major production release' to dump more core than Exxon. (Others, of course, include 'Whoops! I did it again' RH7, XFree86 4.0.x (which *still* crashes when I run Netscape), Netscape 6.0, etc.) How can we possibly bash Microsoft if our junk crashes faster? I'd rather see more working groups take their cue from Linus: If you're behind schedule, simply delay the release. Better yet, make more frequent, incremental changes. DON'T rush your bells and whistles to market until you're sure that the bells tinkle and the whistles, erm, whistle.

  • Or to put it another way: Qt makes a fellow choose two out of three from the set {free software, available now, available on both Windows and POSIX+X11}.

    But the original argument was that QT restricted people's freedoms because the GPLed version didn't run on windows yet. Which is silly. Is GTK+ less free than QT because it doesn't have the equivelant to QT/Embedded (which is also available under the GPL)? Of course not, it's just that GTK+ and QT have different feature sets. It's not a question of freedom.

  • > but it is absolutely not a replacement for the likes of mozilla or opera (or even Netscape 4.x).

    YMMV I was glad to get rid of Netscape. Konqueror, for me and my system, seems to have a few rough spots but it's fast and doesn't crash. And it will only improve. Thanks, Konqueror team!


    Mandrake 7.2 and KDE 2 for me? for free?
  • KDE doesn't seem to cache very well. When I noticed that it was pretty slow in browsing and bringing up the K menu, I discovered that for some reason MD 7.2 didn't turn on 32 bit/DMA for my hard disks. Funny how 5x the I/O rate makes things go soo much faster. Heh.

    Konqueror seems to crash occasionally, but at least it doesn't take X down with it, like good ol' netscape used to. I'm keeping it, and looking forward to some more stability and speed in the next release.

    -- Eric
  • Does anyone know if the whole book is available in a convenient tar file for download?

  • You seem to forget that Qt is dual licensed - the QPL, which is in lots of ways less restrictive than the GPL, ist still an option to choose from. That means that you do not have to put your code under the GPL at all!
  • Sorry. I should have done the footwork. Thank you for the correction.

  • You are misinformed. There are Qt bindings for C, Python, ...

    I don't know about Perl, but if there aren't any bindings, doing them wouldn't be so hard.

    Qt is FREE. Period. You can port it to Windows, MacOS, whatever you like. There IS a non-free Windows version, but that doesn't hinder you in porting the GPL version yourself.

    As for a Qt => GTK wrapper: write one if you want it so much. It would certainly attract quite an amount of attention!

  • FYI

    Kylix is a Linux port of Delphi + C++Builder, so you WON'T have to program in pascal.
  • I agree that the absence of the .css files is annoying. Could someone _authoritative_ comment on whether this is a mistake?

    Meanwhile, a kludgy way to read the html without blasting every file through a stream editor is to open via file:/ rather than dumping the docs on your web server.

    I'm sure the absence of the .css files is simply an oversight, as their inclusion would in no way interfere with any kind of business model I've ever heard of. Hopefully we will see them online soon.

    Open software PLUS open documentation! The world is getting better all the time - and the President of the United States has nothing to do with it! ;^)

  • I can't understand why you would rate that feature as low priority. Mozilla claims to be HTML 4.0 and CSS1 compliant.

    Actually you're right. I thought he was talking about the fact that you can change the buttons of the browser itself. I wasn't aware that he was talking about HTML4 buttons. In that light, it has absolute priority. :)

  • Hum, there is something similar available under UNIX with 'filerunner' [chalmers.se]. It's not as good as Diskmaster2, but conceptually, it's the same.
  • Well, './configure --help' tells me at some line:
    --enable-debug creates debugging code [default=no]
    ...so I thought it was already switched off by default.

    Don't you think a stable release version should be taylored towards end users?

    Even with debug-output, you can configure what debug-stuff you want to see, check kdebugdialog.

    Ah, interesting! Thanks. :-)

  • Perhaps the greatest strength Konquerer has over Mozilla is its responsiveness. It uses native QT widgets. Mozilla uses its own rendering engine to draw widgets, and there's really a big difference in terms of speed. However, you can do cool tricks in Mozilla that you can't do anywhere else. For examle, you can specify the color, background, or the size of your button. Neither Konquerer and IE can handle that as they use native widgets.

    Well, this is nice, agreed, but exactly these "neat features" are very clear indicators that mozilla people don't set their priorities right. What's the point in customizable buttons when the application underneath is unusable?

    As for correctness, Mozilla is much better than Konquerer. I don't have an example off the top of my head, but Mozilla always renders web pages correctly. It also has the best standard support of all the browsers in the market.

    Yes, that's true. It's a HTML4 compilant renderer which is good. (Opera also conforms to HTML4 AFAIK.)

    And finally, you need KDE to run Konquerer. That means if the sysadmin at my school isn't willing to install KDE, I can't use Konquerer at all. I'm sure the sysadmin will install Mozilla, though, because it's not as platform dependent as Konquerer.

    I hope you know this is false. As I pointed out: I'm using Konqueror using Windowmaker [windowmaker.org]. There is no need to run KDE2.0 for Konqueror.

    I like some of the KDE apps, but I dislike KDE's attempt to copy the Windows GUI. Who on earth thinks this stupid 'start' button was a good idea? Gnome is not much better in this regard. Or why is everyone copying the Window-style filemanager? I think the old Amiga-style Diskmaster or Nextstep's filemanager were much better concepts.

  • I've tried KDE 2.0, and I'm just not impressed. Ok, so it's an improvement over KDE 1.x, but that's really not saying much. I found it slow and seriously prone to crashing.

    That's strange. I have a quite different experience. Mozilla is still too slow and crashes way too often and Netscape's HTML renderer is terribly outdated. I've been using Konqueror for the past week and it servers about 90% of my browsing needs. It's relatively stable and very fast. (For instance, look at table rendering!)

    KDE's problem is that they released 2.0 too early. IMHO it's barely in beta quality right now. (Example: If you compile it using mostly standard switches, a lot of KDE programs will print tons of debugging stuff.) But Konqueror is nifty, I use it under Windowmaker.

    As for the much hyped Konqueror, well it's not bad, but it most certainly does not live upto its billing. Don't get me wrong, I realise the amount of work that's gone into it, but it is absolutely not a replacement for the likes of mozilla or opera (or even Netscape 4.x).

    Question: What exactly is mozilla supposed to replace? I've been trying every milestone and while I like some of the ideas, overall the browser is not quite there yet. I really have the feeling they want too much to fit into the browser.

  • Their goal is to produce a browser that beats IE - in looks, flexibility, and rendering performance/spec compliance

    Well, do you think they were successful so far?

    But don't flame them just because you think you are more fit to command their team. :>

    Did I make such a claim? You shouldn't take this so personal.

    In any case, I just fetched the latest build from mozilla.org to see how they're doing. Here's a little benchmark I just did using netscape 4.76, Konqueror and mozilla.

    TIME COMMAND VSZ RSS
    00:00:02 konqueror 17156 11364
    00:00:23 konqueror 39236 32704 21s

    00:00:01 netscape 20400 12196
    00:00:25 netscape 47404 37072 24s

    00:00:10 mozilla-bin 31648 22644
    00:00:41 mozilla-bin 44388 35932 31s

    The first line is the process of the respective browser just after startup. (ie. mozilla took 10 seconds). The second line is taken from 'ps -o time,comm,vsize,rss -a | grep ...' after having loaded a 1'283KB slashdot-html file in each of the three browsers.

    Now, it seems konqueror is not that much faster than I first thought, but its advantage is that you don't have to wait until the whole page is rendered before you see something.

    On a side note I must say that the current nightly build of mozilla looks promising.

  • I'm planning to try a NeXT-ish browse mode for konqueror as soon as I get a little time and here... it's looking quite simple to do, so I'm hopeful I may even get it into 2.1.

    Never seen the Amiga or RiscOS ones though, any info?
  • heh but gtk is only useful as long as you are coding in c, wrappers for other languages lag behind...

    and btw there are python wrappers for qt. check out following sites "Python + KDE tutorial"> and [xs4all.nl]PyKDE [thekompany.com]
  • No, no, no! A free Windows port would kill TrollTech. TT (judging from the outside, Qt's API, for instance--which is the best I've used) assembled a great team of programmers and is paying them to work on the free version of Qt by letting the corporations that can afford it pay for a Windows version (as well as one that can be used to write non-free apps). If there's a Windows version, it might help a few people who want to develop free software for widows, but it will hurt all those who don't--if TT drops Qt, its quality will drop drastically.
  • If the book stresses responsiveness as the story states, perhaps I will be able to run a version of KDE in the future where the menus cascade in a reasonable time - KDE 2.0 on Madrake 7.2 on a Pentium 133 has so far been a disaster for me. I've gotten used to several KDE applications by now, but I've found it less frustrating to call them from another window manager.
  • Definately, dont want any individuals here G

    Jeremy

  • The reason for your existance died when Qt became GPL.

    Not necessarily. What if you don't want to code in C++? Making language bindings for Qt isn't as easy as for GTK+.

    Want to continue the flamewar on the NES [8m.com]?
  • Are you sure you aren't thinking about the Walmart version of Mandrake that is actually 7.2 beta3? I'm running 7.2 on an Abit KT7 Raid with a MX300 sound card. This setup could have some potential setup issues but Mandrake went through it easily and is solid with KDE. I haven't crash KDE yet and wonder what causes other peoples issues. I've always leaned toward Gnome but haven't spent more than a half an hour in it since I installed KDE2. It's not that it is bad but I just haven't felt the need. They both seem on very even footing right now.

  • I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Did it ever occur to you simply to notify the authors that the css was missing? Maybe then they'd put it in the tar archive. Or was your post just a particularly artless troll?

    --

  • An operating system has certain qualities:

    Operating systems are physical entities that you buy in a cardboard box at Circuit City.
    Operating systems are set in stone. They cannot be modified by mere users.

    To keep on calling Linux an OS is like calling a car a cart.

    --

  • There is a perl-Qt library. it seems as yet less advanced than Perl-Tk, but given the power of Qt, it is likely to be eventually better.
  • I guess you are right; I stand corrected.
  • Better still, the Risc OS filer.

    As for KDE2 books, I welcome them. One thing you can say for Microsoft is that there's (plenty of|too much) documentation for their APIs...
  • did you expect something else?
  • If you start developing for KDE/Qt, you will be developing for a GPL'ed library from a single vendor.

    That's fundamentally different from using GPL'ed software like gcc. If you start developing using gcc, your software doesn't automatically become GPL'ed and you can always switch to any of a number of other vendors.

    With KDE/Qt, if you start developing for it, you are for practical purposes tied to the library and the company. If you ever want to make a commercial version of your software, you must license from that vendor and pay whatever they ask.

    Choosing a complex library that falls under the GPL is a big step that you need to consider very carefully, since it closes off most of your options later on. My recommendation would be to stay away from KDE/Qt development, as well as from any library portions of Gnome/GTK that are covered by the GPL. Of course, there is no problem with using GPL'ed software as applications or tools.

    It's also unnecessary to make that kind of commitment to a GPL'ed library when it comes to GUI libraries. wxWindows [wxwindows.org] is a very complete C++ interface to several different toolkits, including Win32 and GTK, and if anybody cares to, it could be adapted to a Qt backend as well. And FLTK [fltk.org] is a nice, simple cross-platform GUI library, good for many applications and much easier to deploy than either GTK or Qt.

  • If I ask myself "do I want to write an open or closed application", the answer is "both". And Troll Tech knows that that is true of many people. That's why their free offer isn't so free: they can count on a big fraction of their "free" users to eventually pay. It's neither "fair" nor "unfair" on their part to propose that bargain, and it's neither "fair" nor "unfair" on my part to say "no thanks"; that might have been a good deal compared to Motif, but I don't think it's a good deal compared to the other available alternatives.

    And from the point of view of promoting open source software, I think the kind of opportunism Troll Tech represents is ultimately harmful. You lead by example, and a transparent commercial bargain like the one Troll Tech proposes is not the example I would like to see companies emulate. If Linux imposed the same restrictions on software that is based on it as Troll Tech's license imposes on Qt applications, Linux would not stand a chance at widespread adoption.

    I think in the current environment, choosing GPL for something as fundamental as a GUI library is, ultimately, harmful to the goals of free software. You are welcome to disagree with that assessment.

  • But in the end, I still see this huge fact staring out from the window of reality: people who are charging money for their own software are bitching that Trolltech is doing the same.

    I think it's simplistic to view the world as divided into the evil people who charge for "Closed Source" software and the good people who produce "Open Source" software. In fact, most people who make such decisions do so as individuals, people who sometimes develop open source software, who sometimes develop commercial software for others, and who sometimes convince their employers to turn commercial projects into open source projects.

    The fact is that if you, as an individual, invest time and effort into Qt, you immediately become a marketing tool for Troll Tech. That's the bargain. If you take on a commercial job after a couple of years of work with Qt, you'll probably try to convince your employer to buy Qt rather than something else. And if you contribute feedback, bug fixes, or enhancements to Qt, you contribute to Troll Tech's bottom line. In doing so, Troll Tech is just as much taking commercial advantage of free software as someone who uses an LGPL'ed library and doesn't voluntarily share their sources.

    Yes, LGPL'ed and BSD'ed libraries might be abused by people I work for. But by using them, I don't immediately sign up to become a marketing tool for a commercial software vendor; the commercial abuse of those tools is someone else's doing, not mine. And by sharing software freely, I think LGPL'ed and BSD'ed libraries are leading by example.

    From a purely practical point of view, there are nice cross-platform alternatives to Qt which are much less restrictive for me personally when I write open source software, and I don't think it is "bitching" to point this out. And from a philosophical point of view, if the kind of thinking that underlies Troll Tech's business model takes hold, I think you can kiss the free software movement goodbye.

  • Listen. If you want to use their software, you either release under the GPL, or else you pay money for an exemption. What's the difference with using proprietary libs? At least, in case with the GPL you have a choice.
  • Time to start looking at your computers hardware. I have been using XF 4.0.x for a while and konqueror recently and it has been very stable for me.


    The number of the beast ...
  • B#llsh*t....... It took Trolltech two or three years after hearing us gripe about it before they made their software FREE! It took years for those people to realize that a GPL license made no sense if you needed a close proprietary tool kit to build it. We have a well justified reason for avoiding closed proprietary software. You are the one who has the problem.
  • The number of the day is 14 3/8 [yahoo.com].
  • True enough. I tried KDE 2 on Mandrake 7.2 and it was both slow and rather unstable. Actually there isn't much reason to use KDE 2 other than Konqueror, Kmail, and Koffice but thankfully, you call them from other window managers.
  • Actually, since the market is closed on Saturday, that would make 14 3/8 the number of yesterday.
  • Granted, this has promise in concept, but will KDE really reap the scale of benefits seen in a more prolific and less-specific open source OS-focused initiative? I dunno. Not a bad though I guess; never hurts to try. At least it'll make terrific gnutella fodder.
  • The Open Publication License has two options, either of which makes the license not free. In this case the publisher has taken the "Can't distribute as a printed book without permission" option.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • No problem. It could be a good book and a very useful one even though it's not Free Software. But I'm getting to hate the way the Open Publication License is used, it seems deceptive. In big letters, "This Book is Under the Open Publication License" and then in 5-point type "but you can't sell printed copies" and sometimes even "and you can't make substantive modifications".

    The OPL is actually 4 different licenses, depending on the options you select. They should all have different names instead of being lumped under "The Open Publication License" in the singular.

    I wonder if the volunteer translators for this book have considered that Howard K. Sams Publishing will hold a monopoly on printed copies of their work. They could consider it a fair trade, which is fine as long as they know about it.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Tell ya what, the day Gnome looks as good as KDE2 is the day I start using it. Right now, it's ugly. It's far better looking than nasty old CDE, but it's got a long way to go until it looks like something I want on my desktop. Yes, I am into pretty GUIs. If I just wanted functionality, I would use CDE. But both are ugly, almost depressing in the long-term view. I want something that makes my day more interesting, and something that makes my friends go "Wow, check that out, that's cool. What are you using?" I have not had KDE2 crash once in the last two weeks I've been using it. Konqueror has been pretty solid, but it freaks out on things like my.yahoo.com, I've still not been able to get it to load that site. But, it's very promising.
  • What I was attmepting to do was provide my perspective on QT/KDE. If I'm not allowed to post MY OPINION on why something sucks, then /. is pointless.
  • The rpms of qt 2.2.1 I got needed Mesa 3.2 installed to let me get kde to work properly. I had glxMesa and it was causing problems with kde. de would not start. I filed a bug and then they told me it was my gl implementation. Which means qt needs gl. binary rpms are easier and more time saving than recompiling from source. I only do that if I absolutely need to.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • It looks like kde 2.0 neds Mesa. Not just any mesa but a particular mesa. Thus I cannot run kwin nor kde. I can run some kde apps, but since I upgraded to kde 2.0 my system has been slightly problematic. GNOME does not shutdown correctly. Kde doesn't run. kconqueror does run and it is pretty sweet. It is slightly faster to start up than mozilla. It renders man pages pretty good. It has cookies management and this little web browser / filemanager is better than IE / netscape or Mozilla. I really like the preview option for images. It makes life soooooo much easier. It has cookie management similar to that of mozilla with a differnet UI. Thus my favorite sites can set cookies and my least favorite cannot (doubleclick as well as others). All it needs now is ad blocking technology built in. AAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhh I need to fix this problem.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • It has been RMS-certified Free for more than a year. It has been under the GPL for a month. You guys got everything you said you wanted. So why are you still bitching? Two or three years ago your group should have been HONEST and said that nothing that Trolltech would do could satisfy you...
  • Start pricing out professinal grade cross-platform development tools. Qt is a long ways away from being expensive.

    But you are right that it is too expensive for "casual" use. Perhaps they should offer a much cheaper version for non-commercial developers, perhaps similar to the educational program.
  • KDE2 still crashes every few hours and they're writing docu?

    Proper software engineering says that the documentation should be finished before releasing the software. I hardly think that they're early. Hell, they're late! But in any case, KDE is not crashing on my box (Slackware 7.1). I find it extremely stable. KOffice has a ways to go, but the rest of the standard KDE2 is quite nice.
  • Oh my god! There's a corpse on my desk!

    Okay, all you trolls go home. Nobody's dead, there's no blood on the highway. Not even a banged shin. KDE2 is staying on my desktop. I don't give a shit what Sun says. They aren't my master.
  • If you're just a user, it doesn't make any difference. If you're a developer, you can STILL use KDE without having to program for it. I don't like GTK, but I still use GIMP, AbiWord, XMMS and others.

    All philosophical issues have evaporated: you can use it under the GPL if software under other licenses are distasteful to use. The aesthetics issue is gone: several OS-emulating widget themes are standard, other themes can be written, KDE has written a bunch of their own, you can use the KDE themes to create your own without having to know programming. Performance is equal to GTK: it always has been, but most distros ship the default build, so build it for multithreading and with -fno-exceptions and it's damn fast!

    So the difference is the same as that between pizzas and calzones. There are some people who like pizza but hate calzones. Go figure...
  • I fully expect Qt to come down in price for Closed Source use in the future, but before it does there needs to be another revenue source. The alternative revenues commonly cited just don't work for Qt. Charging for support is ludicrous: their customer is precisely that type that needs little support, and the library itself has wonderful documentation and and excellent mailing list. To base their revenue on support is to encourage them to ship a product that *needs* support. And giving it away then begging for donations (or kickbacks from Redhat) just isn't realistic.

    I do see some movement in the way of alternate revenue streams though. Opera and Kylix both paid good money for Trolltech services. As desktop unices become more common, this revenue will grow. And I see that they are looking into the proprietary add-on market for Qt modules.

    But in the end, I still see this huge fact staring out from the window of reality: people who are charging money for their own software are bitching that Trolltech is doing the same. Although the shareware writers may be left out in the cold, it is more than affordable for the vast majority of commercial developers. Go ask your auto mechanic what his tools cost.

    I think in the current environment, choosing GPL for something as fundamental as a GUI library is, ultimately, harmful to the goals of free software.

    I fully agree. But Qt is not under the GPL. It is under the GPL *and* the QPL.
  • You misunderstand me! I called no one evil! I'll leave the moralizing name calling to the stallmanistas...

    There's nothing wrong in bitching. Hell, I bitch sometimes myself :-)

  • No, no, no! A free Windows port would kill TrollTech. TT (judging from the outside, Qt's API, for instance--which is the best I've used) assembled a great team of programmers and is paying them to work on the free version of Qt by letting the corporations that can afford it pay for a Windows version

    Yes, but that only applies if you assume that the majority of people buying the licenses would release their code under the GPL, which isn't likely. What it would do, however, is bring a large amount of Free software to Windows.

  • Hear hear! I'm a huge fan of GNOME, but a few days ago I tried KDE 2.0 and was amazed to discover what kinds of things I'd taken for granted not having in GNOME. As in a good e-mail client, good file manager, good web browser, great control panel, good office set, and a generally more "together" feel. (to be fair, I miss sawfish, the panels, and the visual feel of GNOME is nicer). When Nautilus and Evolution and GNOME Office are all usable, I'll probably switch back, but until then...
  • Quoting from the copyright notice here [andamooka.org]:
    Distribution of the work or derivative of the work in any standard (paper) book form is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder.

    In other words, only Sams Publishing has the right to distribute printed copies. This might sound fair enough, but it suffers from the same problem as the QPL: incompatibility with itself. If you want to merge portions of this book with portions of another, similarly licensed book from someone else, then nobody has the right to print the resulting derivative work. If a C++ book, say, was released under this license by Que, say, and you used the C++ book and the KDE book to create a derived work, "Learn C++ for KDE", then neither you nor Que nor Sams Publishing have the right to print that book.
  • Thats really interesting.

    Licenses in general are already a huge mess, and are getting moreso. This book may be, as you said, interesting.

    However, the licenses are just getting silly. I wonder CONSTANTLY about why companies just narrowly tread that path between full-openness, and proprietary.

    In my (ever-so-liberalized) mind, I see the choice being very easy to make. Even in my business, I can see making the choice EITHER proprietary OR open..

    I dont see why people feel compelled to half-ass it.

    Maybe I am just naive..

  • It's not so much that it's expensive, it's that relying on closed-source development tools from a small vendor is dangerous. What if TrollTech is late getting some feature you really need running with Windows 2001, for example? There's significant business risk in using their Windows toolkit.

    It's a real issue, because Microsoft uses MFC to control developers. They're scared of a good, portable, widely used GUI toolkit. That's why it's important to have one.

    There's antitrust history on this, related to Borland, which had the first C++ wrapper for Windows. Symantec decided years ago that fighting Microsoft with a closed-source cross-platform SDK was hopeless, which is why they dumped Bedrock. [byte.com]

    Open source, though, has a big advantage here. Open source doesn't go away if the vendor does. And this is something marketed to programmers, who can fix the thing. So if a free GUI toolkit for Windows gets a reasonable amount of use, it can live for a long time. An open source version may have a bigger potential market than a closed source version. The vendor may have to fund the project by selling support, but then, that's the Red Hat business model.

  • [Qt is] truly Free, so you can port it yourself if you want to. There's a lot of Unix-only Free software, I don't hear you moaning about how GNOME only runs on Unix.

    But this means you have to do the work of porting Qt. The work of porting GTK+ is already mostly done [gimp.org].

    Or to put it another way: Qt makes a fellow choose two out of three from the set {free software, available now, available on both Windows and POSIX+X11}. Until the WinXFree86 team figures out how to work around 16-bit code in Windows 9x GDI (XF86 pretty much works in NT), those three attributes are available in GTK+.

  • While I welcaome anything open, I have to rant a bit.

    In the interest of speed, I downloaded the tgz file and put it on my local server. The css files are missing, resulting in

    • loss of style information
    • nedd to sed the files to death before you can read anything
    • failure in so far as openess is concerned. An open source book should have everything open. No css is as if someone would publish the source but keep the makefiles.
  • The information as provided is unusable without modification.

  • This ceases to be a book... (Score:3)

    by GC ( 19160 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @09:07AM (#630281)
    Books have certain qualities:

    Books are physical entities written on paper
    Boots are set in stone, they cannot be modified

    To keep on calling this a book is like calling a car a cart.

    -

  • Re:Not really OPEN (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @01:42PM (#630282) Homepage Journal
    The *information* is open, not the specific format of a particular copy. If I buy the renewable resource version in paper, I also am unable to modify it without resorting to pencil, pen or crayon.

  • Ultimate in Fairness (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @01:49PM (#630283) Homepage Journal
    Qt is Free Software for Free Software, Open Source for Open Source, and Proprietary for Proprietary. What more could you want?

    Instead of asking yourself if you really want to use a library under the GPL/QPL, instead ask yourself if you want to write an Open or Closed application...

  • Re:KDE development in 3 easy steps (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @02:24PM (#630284) Homepage Journal
    Almost a year ago I posted in the midst of a KDE/GNOME flamewar that it didn't matter what KDE or Trolltech did. They will *never* be accepted by GNU and its sycophants. Now that EVERY stated objection of GNU to KDE is gone, removed, excised and exorcised, I find myself proven correct. These guys just aren't satisified with making their own decisions to use GNOME. With their warped view of freedom, they just can't stand it when people make their own decisions to use KDE.

  • Re:KDE development in 3 easy steps (Score:3)

    by JimDabell ( 42870 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @09:56AM (#630285) Homepage

    QT AFAIK only supports C++

    Wrong. At the very least, there are a good set of bindings for Python, I believe there are also Perl bindings.

    QT is only truly Free on Unix.

    So? It's truly Free, so you can port it yourself if you want to. There's a lot of Unix-only Free software, I don't hear you moaning about how GNOME only runs on Unix.

    GTK works fine on many platforms

    QT works fine on many platforms. X is not required, either.

    Does this increse my freedom as a programmer? (Can I apply skills/knowledge of this undertaking to other projects/applications/platforms?)

    What makes you think that you cannot do this with QT? Trolltech also sells QT under a license that allows non-free programs to be written with QT. How does this magically remove all your knowledge of QT once you have completed a project?

    Does this increase my users freedom? (Can they run in in Windows, etc?)

    QT works on windows. You only need to pay for QT if you develop with it, and don't want to port it yourself.

  • Now for a free Windows port (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @10:46AM (#630286) Homepage
    TrollTech offers a Windows version for $1500-$1950 per developer. That's too expensive for casual programmers, and it comes from too small a company for use in major projects.

    Anybody planning to offer an open version on Windows?

  • Open Publication License: free or non-free? (Score:3)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @09:04AM (#630287) Homepage Journal
    The Open Publication License 1.0 [opencontent.org] covering this book can be ./configured as a free or non-free license. The base Open Publication License 1.0 is free; the OPL with either of the Section VI options is not free [gnu.org].

  • KDE Development.. (Score:4)

    by iamsure ( 66666 ) on Saturday November 11, 2000 @08:44AM (#630288) Homepage
    I'm glad to see this book come out. It seems to me that there are not nearly enough quality books on KDE & Gnome programming in general, and definitely not enough for KDE itself.

    In the years to come we are going to need alot of quality tools to help pull programmers out of their reliance on the HUGE pile of high-quality crutches (ie, books on how to program in VB).

    The transition to a free/open software world is not going to be won on the desktop alone. The other half of the fight is going to be for the commercial programmers.

    With the establishment of the Gnome foundation, I was slightly worried that KDE might slow down a little bit. Thankfully, they didnt seem to miss a beat. :)

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