[Kommander-devel] Kommander's future

[Andras Mantia]

Hi,

On Tuesday 04 July 2006 08:53, Eric Laffoon wrote:
> > - 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.

Yes, it seems to be close, but for some reason I had the feeling it can 
be improved. 

> > - make the executor as small as possible
>
> AFAIK it is fairly small, but there are issues as to what is
> included.

Exactly.

> > - move the executor to kdebase
>
> This is in my mind an essential goal!

Yes, but without a clear separation this cannot be achieved as it means 
that the library should go to kdelibs, otherwise kommander will depend 
on kdebase. So there is a need of a clean, documented, LGPL library. 
Hm, there is a problem here, as Qt Designer is GPL. So either we 
rewrite everything or this move won't be possible,

> > - 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.

Well, the backdraw is that the editor will be a little bit heavier. The 
benefits are that it will have the full power of an IDE, including help 
browsing, search in files, multiple document interface, several 
treeviews for file browsing, etc. But it can be done the same way as we 
will do for Quanta: depend on kdelibs and kdevelop-platform 
(libraries). 

> Also we were looking at the UI designer tool that was being developed
> for Kexi. 

Certainly, as this might solve the GPL issue as well. I'm not sure about 
its license, but I think its LGPL. As you correctly wrote, Qt4 is 
anyway a big change, so might make sense to taking into account the 
previous experience, start again but now not using Qt Designer as a 
base, but free libraries only. Of course, the parser and all the 
Kommander specific code which was separate until now can be kept.

But to do this big move and really push Kommander forward, its needed to 
have somebody who knows how it works, what were the problems during its 
development and how they were solved. Shortly: we need Michal, 
otherwise it will really be a new app started from the ground.

> Again, I want to clarify my objectives for Kommander in KDE 4.
> 1) Existing functionality with improvements in editing and new widget
> functionality
If you mean source editing, we need to use KTextEditor and I will help 
with that one.

> 2) Project and installed program management facilities
> 3) Extensible using Kommander developed dialogs and menus
> 4) Context menus

I see these items as extensions that doesn't really depend on Qt3/Qt4 
base, but I suggest to write the KDE4 version of Kommander with these 
ideas in mind from the start.

> 5) Conversion of scripts to Actions and passed parameters on Actions
> 6) Fully functional Wizards

As I see this is a bug only, maybe a limitation how wizards were handled 
in qt designer.

> 7) Fully functional MainWindow application design

I don't know about this yet.

Andras

-- 
Quanta Plus developer - http://quanta.kdewebdev.org
K Desktop Environment - http://www.kde.org
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