[Kommander-devel] Kommander's future

[Eric Laffoon]

On Thursday 27 April 2006 3:10 pm, Andras Mantia wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  What are the plans for Kommander in KDE4? I have my plans, but of
> course, it's not (only) me who decides. What I would like to see is:

Oh good, I get a say. ;-)
>
> - complete separation of executor and editor

This is pretty close isn't it? There are some library calls but I thought we 
were there or close.

> - make the executor as small as possible

AFAIK it is fairly small, but there are issues as to what is included.

> - move the executor to kdebase

This is in my mind an essential goal!

> - rewrite the editor as a kdevelop plugin

This is something I'm not sure I can get behind. Don't get me wrong, I like 
the idea. I'm just not sure about the target audience of user/developers.
>
> And of course port it to KDE4.
> Because of the uncertainty, I requested Laurent to NOT change Kommander
> in trunk at all, meaning that from today on all part of kdewebdev from
> trunk will be ported to KDE4, except Kommander. I requested this stop
> because if we really do something like I suggested, it will be a waste
> of time to port the current codebase.
> BTW, I'm sure that porting it to a KDevelop plugin will not mean that we
> must throw away all the code, but of course we should take the chance
> to get rid of what we don't need. And there is Qt Designer from
> Qt4. ;-)
>
> Andras

Also we were looking at the UI designer tool that was being developed for 
Kexi. At one time there was a general consensus that we should use it. I'm 
not even aware of the status of it now. Likewise we have a lot of underlying 
widget issues with Qt 4 and the new data and UI separation features. I like 
them and would like to use them, but we're talking a potentially huge rewrite 
no matter what. So the question arises about what to use for the KDE 4 base 
of the developer tool. Because I haven't been keeping up to date it's 
possible that moving to a KDevelop base answers all these issues. 

I invite anyone on the list to discuss this, but in particular I think Michal, 
Andras and I need to. Also Andras should have the best idea how these tools 
are looking for KDE 4 in relation to our needs.

Again, I want to clarify my objectives for Kommander in KDE 4.
1) Existing functionality with improvements in editing and new widget 
functionality
2) Project and installed program management facilities
3) Extensible using Kommander developed dialogs and menus
4) Context menus
5) Conversion of scripts to Actions and passed parameters on Actions
6) Fully functional Wizards
7) Fully functional MainWindow application design
-- 
Eric Laffoon
Project Lead - kdewebdev module