Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Desktop Environments in the World of Pro Audio
From: Paul Davis (pbd_AT_op.net)
Date: Wed Jul 03 2002 - 21:22:33 EEST
You all just knew I'd be on this like a fly on cow dung, right? :)))
>3) "GNOME and KDE are only suitable for office-automation applications"
>Much of the "eye-candy" in GNOME and KDE *is* done from the perspective of an
>office-automation type of application -- e.g. a word processor or a
>spreadsheet. However, there's lots that would be handy for an audio
>application as well. Dialog boxes, for one thing. Theme support. Help
>systems. The list goes on.
Lets take a look at that list:
Dialog Boxes:
these *should* form part of the toolkit. the fact that they
don't is, IMHO, a design/political error. Given that libgnomeui
can be used without the rest of GNOME, i'd be willing to use
GNOME::Dialog, but i haven't found any particular use for it.
Its real purpose is to standardize the appearance of a dialog
box, but it adds almost no other functionality - the developer
still has a lot of work to do in many cases.
Theme Support: comes from the toolkit, not the DE.
Help Systems: I've said here, and others have agree with me, that
these are invariably either useless or close to useless.
The best help system seems to come from getting a decent
HTML browser to view a well-written HTML documentation
package. Its true that GNOME and KDE come with simple
and nicely encapsulated ways to do this that work along
with the user's preferred browser. Congratulations,
you've just given me *one* reason to use a desktop
environment :)
>Any other potential downsides? It strikes me as absurd to be sitting here
>bemoaning the primitive state of UIs on Linux audio apps while we have the
>embarassment of riches called KDE and GNOME sitting here at our elbow.
I think the list of riches will need to be a bit deeper than this to
convince me to switch. The "polish" we've spoken about doesn't come
the features that KDE and GNOME provide, IMHO.
More interesting features would involve things like cut-n-paste
between apps of audio+MIDI data. I haven't seen any work in KDE or
GNOME to support this, though for all I know, it might be possible
already.
--p
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