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Qt/Mac KDE Call for Help

Posted by pudge on Sat Aug 16, 2003 02:07 AM
from the mmm-pie dept.
Businesses GUI KDE OS X Operating Systems Programming Apple IT Technology
aqsalter writes "Benjamin Reed of Fink fame is calling for help porting KDE to Mac using Qt/Mac. Interested parties should swarm the KDE-Darwin mailing list. KWrite for Mac here we come!"
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  • Disturbing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by veldmon (595009) on Saturday August 16 2003, @02:49AM (#6711044)
    The one thing I've never understood is the relationship between OpenDarwin and the distribution concerns. Although GNU-Darwin maintains its own fork of Darwin, it mostly functions as a distribution the way Fink does. Meaning, it is a solid addition to OS X and not its replacement. However, only Fink seems to be traveling in the same direction as OpenDarwin, as far as strategic interests are concerned.

    GNU-Darwin almost seems to be hindering the entire Mac OSS unix community. It's only logical that the community should be centered around the PPC. Especially now that the G5 is on its way. This is where OpenDarwin and Fink are pouring all of their porting energy into. GNU-Darwin on the other hand has strangely abandoned the PPC in favor of x86 compatible chips. I believe the spokesman "proclus" said that they had to refuse to work with Apple over some free software issues.

    This almost surreal splintering can do nothing but harm the overall effort of ported OSS software for the Mac. If we can't agree that the PPC is the heart of the Mac, than what can we agree on?

    • Re:Disturbing (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      proclus is, IMHO, an opportunist trying to make some bucks. And I also think that he has an undeserved ego and he project the impression that I have of him that, he think that the american dream is about being envied, and getting all the attention. Of course from the POV of the avg. stater, being does help in these ventures.

    • GNU-Darwin is irrelevant. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Xenex (97062) <xenex@@@opinionstick...com> on Saturday August 16 2003, @03:30AM (#6711172) Homepage Journal
      "The one thing I've never understood is the relationship between OpenDarwin and the distribution concerns."
      OpenDarwin distrubute software. They call it DarwinPorts.

      OpenDarwin [opendarwin.org] is a project launched in April 2001 which works towards porting BSD-style software to Darwin, and features a crown jewel of DarwinPorts [opendarwin.org]. OpenDarwin was founded by Apple, although they now have no control over the project's operation. Jordan Hubbard [slashdot.org] is one of many Apple employees closely associated with the project.

      "GNU-Darwin almost seems to be hindering the entire Mac OSS unix community."
      Virtually no-one in the Macintosh community cares about GNU-Darwin.

      GNU-Darwin [gnu-darwin.org] is a project founded by a person that goes by the name proclus [slashdot.org]. This proclus character spends a fair majority of his time replying to valid criticism of his project on sites such as Slashdot and MacSlash [macslash.org]. Unfortunately, this time would be much better spent working on the actual GNU-Darwin project; GNU-Darwin has nothing to offer that hasn't already been done better by either OpenDarwin or Fink [sf.net].

      "This almost surreal splintering can do nothing but harm the overall effort of ported OSS software for the Mac."
      What splintering? GNU-Darwin is totally irrelvant.

      GNU-Darwin are not even involved with Metapgk [metapkg.org], an alliance formed between DarwinPorts, Fink, and Gentoo [gentoo.org]. All the major packaging groups in the Macintosh community are part of this alliance.

      "If we can't agree that the PPC is the heart of the Mac, than what can we agree on?"
      That GNU-Darwin isn't going to exist much longer.

      DarwinPorts is going to be a part of Panther, and OpenDarwin is assured of a bright future. Fink and Gentoo are part of Metapkg, so all porting work that OpenDarwin does will help those projects as well.

      GNU-Darwin is totally insignificant, has virtually no support in the Macintosh community, and is let by someone with a warped view of reality. When it inevitably disappears, no one will care.

  • But....why? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Prien715 (251944) <agnosticpope@[ ]cast.net ['com' in gap]> on Saturday August 16 2003, @02:51AM (#6711050) Homepage Journal
    I know I'm sacrificing karma on this but I'll ask the question anyway...why? Though I love linux as much as the next guy, OSX is probably the best GUI around. Why not concentrate efforts on making KDE the best GUI possible...better than OSX...before trying to port it? It'd be like Microsoft porting IIs to Linux. Who'd honestly use it?

    • Re:But....why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gdarklighter (666840) on Saturday August 16 2003, @03:10AM (#6711114) Homepage
      If I understand correctly, the effort is not to port the GUI itself, but applications that use the kdelibs and arts libraries (i.e. koffice, konqueror, etc).
      • If I could get KMail running with MacOS X (X11 doesn't count), I'd drop Apple's Mail app in the blink of an eye.
      • Didn't Apple do much of the work already, when they ported the Konquerer renderer into Safari?

        • Re:But....why? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Matthias Wiesmann (221411) on Saturday August 16 2003, @07:05AM (#6711643) Homepage Journal
          Didn't Apple do much of the work already, when they ported the Konquerer renderer into Safari?
          Not really, what they did for Safari was basically a small library that emulates the few QT controls used in the Konqueror rendering framework - I think this library is called Quack.

          Porting KDE is another beast altogether, we are not talking about a few controls and widgets. We are talking about application design frameworks. This means:

          • Handle inter-application data transfers: clipboard, drag-drop, services. Both framework use different internal formats (rich text, images, sounds, urls) so you have to convert things on the fly.
          • Link KDE application on OS X services for printing, file-management, filename mapping, icons, etc...
          • Link KDE application settings like internationalisation, appearances, user preferences to the OS X system.
          • Handle application level events and scripting - i.e make it possible for KDE application to understand apple-events like quit, open, print, but also OSAX scripting.
          All those things require a tremendous amount of work.
          • The library is actually called "KWQ", and it's a bridge between things like QString and the Cocoa stuff that does the same thing. WebKit handles the UI, I think.

            At the beginning, I think the idea is just to get the apps running on QT/Mac effectively.
            (KDE already links into OSX's printing, since that uses the open-source CUPS, although it still uses its own GUI.)

        • Re:But....why? (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          No. There's no KDE library code in KHTML. There was some QT code, unfortunately, but Apple's programmers wrote a little shim library that presents an identical interface to QT's foundation classes (strings and whatnot) to get around that. This library is now part of KHTML. So the QT dependencies are slowly being removed. That's a good thing.
    • The GUI library (Qt) is already ported, so they just need to get it in shape and then fix the K apps to no longer use direct X11 calls. Then we too can have free alternatives to Office.
    • > Who'd honestly use it?

      I would. The point is to be able to run KDE apps natively in OS X. That would be a major infusion of free software - some of which (KDevelop especially) I use extensively.

      It would lessen my need to dual-boot my Powerbook, and let me run OS X alone a lot more.

        • Spoken by someone who obviously hasn't used OS X or a Mac very much or at all. The whole reason the Mac interface is so good is subtle features and deep use of use (some of which was lost in the move to X, but will return at some point, no doubt).

          I disagree (myself being a person who uses OS X a lot; I type these very words on an iBook 800). Indeed, the guy does not capitalize Mac correctly, but his point remains valid. Power users usually require extensive customization of their working environment. The

          • KDE for MacOS X could be a Holy Grail for these people - OS of their choice running on a machine of their choice WITH A DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT OF THEIR CHOICE.

            But what would be the point? At that point OSX will just be reduced to a Linux clone (albeit one that can run Photoshop etc natively). Why bother?

            If having a desktop environment of their own choice on OSX is such a big deal, run rooted X11 and take Aqua out of the equation. It won't run quite as snappily as Linux, but hey if that's what you want to d

          • I am much more simpathetic to your opinion than most of the other replies, but I must point out a small error. We are porting KDE to QT/Mac. This means that KDE *WILL* use the OSX Aqua GUI and all that xcomes with it. KWin and KDM and everything like that will NOT be ported, so the customization will not sky-rocket when KDE works. we'll still have just what OSX offers, just a new library to link against for GUI apps (QT/Mac).

            On the other hand, OSX is highly customizable, it just takes a little more work th
        • KDE is great if you want to spend about half your time configuring it. You can really customise KDE. It's got more options than the next California election. What's the point, though? In the end, you're still getting the same stuff done. I really don't think someone with a fanatical need to configure their desktop is really a power user. I'd call them more of a nerd with a god complex. The real power users are the people who know how to get stuff done... have a solid understanding of unix, know how t

          • You miss the point by a mile (Score:4, Insightful)

            by AvantLegion (595806) on Saturday August 16 2003, @05:15PM (#6714173) Journal
            You talk about KDE's extensive ability to be customized, but you take the flawed approach of thinking that people that enjoy this option use every last capability of it.

            This is not true.

            The point of KDE customizing is so that people that want one or two things to be a very specific way can make it that way and be happy.

            Very few people customize every last thing on the desktop. But many people customize a few things, and for different people, it's different things they want changed.

            You don't have to customize everything to appreciate KDE's deep and broad customizing options. All you have to do is customize a couple of GUI features in a way that other DE's don't allow, and you'll see the benefit immediately.

            • Actally, I believe you've missed my point by a mile.

              My point was not that extensive customizability is a negative thing, but that it's usually unnecessary, and does very little to make your actual computing experience more powerful.

              I know guys who dedicate their lives to perfecting their shell setup files. I'm sure they have lots of fun doing it, but I don't think it really makes that much difference to how much work they can get done.

            • You talk about KDE's extensive ability to be customized, but you take the flawed approach of thinking that people that enjoy this option use every last capability of it.

              Actually, the last time I spent a significant amount of time using KDE as my default desktop, I did spend a lot of time noodling around in customizing every last aspect of the interface. I did not do this because it was fun. It was not fun. No.

              I did this because if I didn't find a way to fix the default settings, I was going to shoot so

  • A friend of mine has an i-book.
    He got rid of the osx and installed debian.
    And guess what, KDE runs fine.
    No porting needed ;-)
  • KDE for Win2k/XP? That would totally rock the house. I could have all the game playing of windows with all the nix of KDE. Then when I reboot to real nix it would look almost exactly the same.
    • haha.. Right because you know KDE has so much to do with *nix. KDE is just a window manager you tool. So when you boot into your real *nix operating system, Linux I`m guessing, You will have an OS that will look the same but operate completely different. Yeah that wont be confusing. I guess its okay though because You know as well as I know that your not running any unix based OS.
    • Porting KDE to Win2k/XP is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. It's dumber then a friend of mine who clipped a 9 volt to his balls. If you want to play games buy a Game Cube. If you want to run a stable computer then use a *nix. Or better yet encourage your game maker to write that game in OpenGL so its easier to port to OSX or Linux.
      • > Or better yet encourage your game maker to write that game in OpenGL so its easier to port to OSX or Linux.

        I agree with the sentiment, but you'd have to be a fool to think the game developers are going to listen to a pathetically tiny fraction of their audience. Particularly when Direct3D has new effects and other fuckery to show off.

        • I agree with the sentiment, but you'd have to be a fool to think the game developers are going to listen to a pathetically tiny fraction of their audience. Particularly when Direct3D has new effects and other fuckery to show off.

          Newsflash - OpenGL is extensible WITHOUT releasing a new version, and they do update fairly often.

          Note that our Slashdot Lord John Carmack writes all of his engines (which many a game then proceed to license) in OpenGL. So don't tell me that OGL doesn't have new effects and fucke
    • How about the worst of both worlds? A Window manager designed mostly to emulate Windows poorly atop an operating system that actually *is* Windows. Ugh.
      • The ability to run a different window manager in Windows would be awesome. Even the ability to run a different desktop or taskbar would be great.

        Frankly, the only reason why people think Windows is easy is simply because they're used to it. The actual window manager component is lame. No snap-to's, no z-order control, no window shading. Sure, it looks pretty, but in terms of functionality, even Blackbox has it beat.

        If I could run a native (not cygwin) KDE, GNOME or Xfce under Windows, I would do it in a h
        • You can do this already

          A simple Google Search [google.com] finds a bunch of them. Some for-pay, some for-free.

          I don't use them because WinXP's taskbar acutally does everything I want it to do, and when I use Win2k at work, I can't customize it that much.

          If I could run a native (not cygwin) KDE, GNOME or Xfce under Windows, I would do it in a heartbeat.

          So would I, probably. But they're simply not ported.
    • I think your .sig answers your own question!

      Peace out.
  • KWrite for Mac here we come!"

    KWrite? *yawn*

    KDevelop? Woohoo!

  • But would it behave like a Mac app? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by anarkhos (209172) on Sunday August 17 2003, @09:17PM (#6719963)
    'cause not a single Qt app does so far
  • I heard that Panther is going to have X11 integrated into the OS. How tight is this integration, and if I'm running an app in X11 how different does it feel? Are the main things going to be there like copy and paste with other apps? How about drag and drop?

    when I go to the panther website, this is all that I see:
    Panther will include a final X11 window server for Unix-based apps, improved NFS/UFS, FreeBSD 5 innovations as well as support for popular Linux APIs, IPv6 and other important acronyms.

    It w

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