[ghns] GHNS Rant

[Josef Spillner]

Hola!

El Jueves, 10. Noviembre 2005 18:10, Luke Alan Sandell escribió:
> Here are some criticisms I have against GHNS. I was going to post it on
> Bugzilla, but it was too general. Please take with a grain of salt (or
> alternatively, several glasses of wine). I am also not subscribed to the
> list, so if you could kindly CC any replies.

CCing activated.

> The GHNS dialog is a usability nightmare, and should probably be altogether
> eliminated in favor of a web-based interface. The only feedback the user
> receives while everything is loading is the message "Empty Page" and
> multiple, ugly, KIO progress dialogs. Then there is the HUGE kcmshell-like
> list box on the far left that normally only contains a single item.

The "GHNS dialog" you're referring to - I take it you're talking about 
KNewStuff's download dialog. It's just one of the many possible dialogs. You 
can easily implement your own on top of the engine class.
Better yet, did you know we're steering towards KDE 4 and the lifetime of the 
current dialog is already nearing its end? Because - yes! - it was written 
back in 2003. And a new one is already in KStuff CVS and will move to KDE SVN 
soon.

> Why reinvent the wheel or confine yourself to clunky static interfaces like
> this when all this dynamic, web-based technology is at your fingertips? If
> the user clicks on "Get Hot New Stuff" in an application, they should
> simply be taken to a site such as kde-look.org where they can browse
> content in a manner they see fit.

Web-based technology is a dangerous topic. The "mission" statement of 
KStuff.org includes exactly this - to provide people with Free (capital F) 
web-based infrastructure.
How many Free general-purpose backends do you know? There's maybe 
art.gnome.org (specialised on artwork) and maybe Hotstuff. That's it. And KDE 
as a project cannot afford to depend on non-free infrastructure. The dialog 
is a nice way to abstract from the backend and give the user an interface 
which is integrated into the desktop.
How would you handle translating the web interface into the 50+ languages KDE 
supports? Feel free to start up a translation coordination team for 
Cocodrilo, the Hotstuff web interface which is the (small-scale) Free 
alternative to kde-*.org.

I'm already in the talks with Oregon State about getting a Xen server 
sponsored. But such things take months to decide, unfortunately, therefore it 
currently looks a bit dull on the progress side.

> This would be done using a special XML mimetype that will be
> recognized by Konqueror and will cause a GHNS helper program to be launced,
> which will of course check a configurable list to make sure the resource
> comes a trusted site. Users shouldn't need to manually download things into
> to their hidden KDE home - even as a power user I find this to be a tedious
> and braindead proceedure. And of course they shouldn't have to choose
> between different sizes of wallpapers, as ordinary users have no reason to
> know their display resolution anyway.

The new spec draft already lists different resolutions as a possible usage of 
the new options tag. Thankfully contributed by the art.gnome.org format.
About the helper program, that's something we can still have in addition.

> Now, why would I want an application that could download only content that
> is "hot" or "new?" Why not allow me to browse all the content arranged in
> any way I choose? The other day I trying to retrieve the Liquid Weather
> theme for SuperKaramba, but I was not allowed to because it is apparently
> not "hot" or "new" enough to appear in the GHNS dialog (I was under the
> mistaken impression that Liquid Weather was among the most popular, eg.
> "hot", themes. Apparently its position is rivaled by such world-changers as
> the About.com Search).

Well it should appear in the "new" tab. But - lo and behold - KDE up to 3.4 
did not support a real distinction there, because this was a bug and fixed 
during aKademy this year. Try out KDE 3.5 and if it's still not there, bug 
them about it ;)

There was a lot of work done on GHNS during aKademy - but since then only 
small parts, like the Debianisation of the Hotstuff backend. Those are tasks 
which do not bring in credits, yet they have to be done.

> Community-based content distribution is one way in which free desktops can
> always excel in comparison to their commercial counterparts, for reasons
> that are so obvious that I need not mention here. It is one of those
> tantalizing technologies that would be so nice if it actually worked.

Free desktops can excel if people work on them. Granted, your comments (as 
every comment) are welcome, but there's more to it than commenting.

Josef