[Portland] Thoughts on the integration tasks

[Martin Konold]

Am Donnerstag, 8. Dezember 2005 05:19 schrieb Billy Biggs:

Hi,

> that many of the things on this list are already well covered by
> existing APIs used by running applications.  For example, GTK+, Qt, and
> Motif all have a concept of a default application font, and it is well
> understood how to query it.

You mean a common way to figure out which are the default fonts of the 
desktop? 

So what is the common cross desktop way of query of the default fonts? (So 
that we simply can document it!)

> desktop interoperability.  For fonts and other system settings, the
> XSETTINGS protocol was designed and used by GTK+ with the intention of
> promoting interopability, and it was capitalized on by XFCE, but it
> seems it was never implemented in KDE/krdb. 

Hmm,... does anyone know why it was not adopted by KDE? Maybe this topic shall 
be discussed on xdg at lists.freedesktop.org as it is imho not really desktop 
specific.

BTW: How do you expect Java programmers to use the XSETTINGS protocol?

> Even for the file dialog, if the toolkit dialog ever looks out of
> place, that seems like a bug in the dialog.

I don't want to go that far. But look for example at a standard Java/Swing.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/filechooser.html

It looks and works very different from a users point of view. Actually if you 
for example use this Java dialog on a KDE desktop you will be disappointed in 
many respects including missing bookmarks and shortcuts.

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2005/07/kdes-file-dialog-is-movie-player.html

> However, I tend to think 
> that the "file dialog problem" is maybe less important than its status
> as canonical-interop-issue would indicate.  When presented with a novel
> dialog, users can at least see that it's different and can deal with it,
> and furthermore it's not uncommon for applications to customize the file
> dialog in some way.

Useful customization is imho different from a totally different concept and 
breaking the users stettings (e.g. standard folder for documents)

>   - WM keybindings aren't standardized, and their union takes over a
>     very large range of "nice" keybindings.  This makes it really hard
>     to select sane default keybindings in Eclipse that don't conflict

So maybe it would make sense if Eclipse could adapt itself to the environment 
it is running in. E.g. I expect that Eclipse is using Mac-like keybindings on 
Mac OS and Windows like keybindings on Windows while I also expect that 
eclipse offers keybindings which fit to the desktop environment on Unix e.g. 
CDE, GNOME and KDE.

>   - keybindings for standard widgets aren't always consistent either

You mean that GNOME/KDE use different keybindings for similar tasks within 
similar widgets?

>   - drag-and-drop interop and standard formats

There is a spec for D&D. 

	http://www.newplanetsoftware.com/xdnd/

If IIRC it is the oldest common cross desktop spec and well supported

	http://www.newplanetsoftware.com/xdnd/supporters.html

Anything missing there? Maybe it needs further specification for more things.

>   - dialog button ordering - I think there is now an XSETTINGS

I just checked

http://standards.freedesktop.org/xsettings-spec/xsettings-spec-0.5.html

>   setting, 
>     can KDE just set this property, and honour it in return?

I am currently asking on the kde-core-devel ml about this. I personally not so 
fond of yet another background process running on the desktop but I think 
that this could be overcome.

>   - kwin versus metacity behaviour is always fun :)

Is this due to lack of specification?

Regards,
-- martin

-- 
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Erlewein, Frank, Konold & Partner - Beratende Ingenieure und Physiker