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      New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)
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    Programmers wanted!


Motivation
----------

Unix popularity grows thanks to the free variants, mostly Linux. But still a
consistant, nice looking free desktop-environment is missing. There are
several nice either free or low-priced applications available, so that
Linux/X11 would almost fit everybody needs if we could offer a real GUI.

Of course there are GUI's. There is the Commond Desktop Environment (much
too exansive), Looking Glas (not too expensive but not really the solution),
and several free X-Filemanagers that are almost GUI's. Moxfm for example is
very well done, but unfortunately it is based on Motif.  Anyway, the
question is: What is a GUI? What should a GUI be?

First of all, since there are a lot of missunderstandings on this topic,
what is NOT a GUI:

- the X-Window-System is NOT a GUI. It's what its name says: A Window system

- Motif is NOT a GUI. They tried to create a GUI when they made Motif, but
  unfortunately they couldn't really agree, so they released Motif as
  Widget-Library with a Window-Manager. Much later they completed Motif with
  the CDE, but too late, since Windows already runs on the majority of
  desktops.

- Window-managers are NOT GUI's. They are (better: should be) small programs
  that handle the windows. It's not really the idea to hack a lot of stuff
  into them. 

IMHO a GUI should offer a complete, graphical environment. It should allow a
users to do his everyday tasks with it, like starting applications, reading
mail, configuring his desktop, editing some files, delete some files, look
at some pictures, etc.  All parts must fit together and work together. A
nice button with a nice "Editor"-icon isn't not at all a graphical user
environment if it invokes "xterm -e vi". Maybe you have been disappointed
long time ago too, when you installed X with a nice window manager, clicked
on that beautiful "Help"-Icon ... chrk chrk (the hard disk)...an ugly,
unsuable, weird xman appeared on the desktop :-(


A GUI for endusers
------------------

The idea is NOT to create a GUI for the complete UNIX-system or the
System-Administrator. For that purpose the UNIX-CLI with thousands of tools
and scripting languages is much better. The idea is to create a GUI for an
ENDUSER. Somebody who wants to browse the web with Linux, write some letters
and play some nice games.

I really believed that is even yet possible with Linux until I configured my
girlfriends Box. Well, I didn't notice anymore that I work with lots of
different kind of menues, scrollbars and textwidgets. I already know that
some widgets need to be under the mouse when they should get the keyevents,
some sliders wants the middle mouse for dragging and some textwidgets only
want emacs-bindings and don't understand keys like "pos1" or "end". And
selecting some text is different everywere, too. Even the menues and buttons
(for exampel Xaw, Fvwm, XForms, Motif) behave completely different.

One word to the Athena-Widgets: Although there are a few nice applications
available that uses these "widgets" we should really get rid of them.
Thinking that "Athena is a widget-library" is a similar missunderstanding
like "X is a GUI". Athena is an very old example how widget libraries could
be implemented with Xlib and Xt. It's more or less a online-documentation
for Widget-Set-Programmers, but not a tool for application-programmers.
Unfortunately, the old Unix problem, a so good online-documentation that
people used it for applications.

So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look&feel for
all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is
different from elder attempts.

Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in
source and price for free software development. Check out
                        http://www.troll.no

The stuff is called "Qt" and is really a revolution in programming X. It's
an almost complete, fully C++ Widget-library that implementes a slightly
improved Motif look and feel, or, switchable during startup, Window95.

The fact that it is done by a company (Troll Tech) is IMO a great advantage.
We have the sources and a superb library, they have beta testers. But they
also spend their WHOLE TIME in improving the library. They also give great
support. That means, Qt is also interesting for commercial applications. A
real alternative to the terrible Motif :) But the greatest pro for Qt is the
way how it is programmed. It's really a very easy-to-use powerfull
C++-library. 

Qt is also portable, yet to Windows95/NT, but you do not have to worry about
that. It's very easy to use UNIX/X specific things in programming, so that
porting to NT is hardly possible :-)

I really recommand looking at this library. It has IMO the power to become
the leading library for free software development. And it's a way to escape
the TCL/TK monsters that try to slow down all our processors and eat up our
memory...

It's really time yet to standarize the desktop somewhat. It's nonsense to
load 10 different widgets into memory for the same task. 
Imagine this desktop:
   - fvwm (own widgets)
   - rxvt (own widgets)
   - tgif (own widgets)
   - xv (own widgets)
   - ghostview (athena widgets)
   - lyx (xforms widgets)
   - xftp (motif widgets)
   - textedit (xview widgets)
   - arena (own widgets)

One may argue that a usual UNIX-Box has enough memory to handle all these
different kind of widgets. Even if this might be correct, the really
annoying thing is, that all these widgets (menus, buttons, scrollbars, etc.)
behave slightly different. And this isn't only an academic example, I've
really seen such desktops :-}

I know we couldn't get rid of this chaos at once, but my dream is a
coexistance between Motif and Qt.


The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)
----------------------------------

I don't have the time to do this all alone (also since LyX is my main
project). But a thing like a Desktop Environment can easily be cut into lots
of parts. There is very probably a part for you, too!  If you want to learn
some X-programming, why not doing a small, neat project for the KDE? If you
know others who like to programm something, please pretend them from writing
the 1004th tetris games or the 768th minesweeper clone ;-) Think we also
have enough XBiffs yet...

So here is my project list so far. Probably there are even more things to do
that would fit great into the KDE. It's a very open project.


- Panel:

  The basic application. Run's as FvwmModule (at the beginning). Offers a
  combination between Windows95 and CDE. I think about a small taskbar at
  the bottom and a kind of CDE-panel on the top of the screen. The panel has
  graphical icon menus on the left (similar to GoodStuff) to launch
  applications, 4 buttons in the middle to switch to other virtual desktops
  and few icons for often needed applications on the right. There is for
  example a mail-icon that also indicates new mail, a wastebasket to open
  the delete-folder (that also indicates when it isn't empty and is capable
  of drag'n'drop). Maybe a analog clock with date at the very right. Also a
  nice special icon for exiting the environment or locking the screen. All
  the stuff is completly configurable via GUI. I'm also thinking about
  solutions, that only available applications can be installed on the
  desktop and that new applications appear on the desktop automatically.

  I started to work on this panel, but would of course love some help. There
  are also lot of smaller things to do, like a tool to chose a background
  pixmap (for each virtual desktop) etc.

  Also nice icons are needed!


- Filemanager

  Another major application inside the KDE. The idea is not to create a
  powerful high-end graphical bash-replacement (like tkdesk tries to be),
  but a nice looking easy-to-use filemanager for simple tasks. Simple tasks
  are mainly deleting some files, copying some files, copying some files on
  the disk, starting applications by clicking on a file (for example
  ghostview for postscript files or xli for gifs, etc).

  I'm thinking about nice windows, one for each directory, that shows icons
  for every file. It should be possible to drag files around (either copy or
  move), even between different windows. Another important point is the
  support of the floppy-disk, so that mounting/umounting is done
  user-transparent.

  Dragging of icons should be done in a nice way, that means moving around a
  special window (see Qt's xshape example), NOT like xfm or xfilemanager by
  setting another monochrome bitmap for the cursor.

  So it will also be possible to put files as icons on the desktop. This is
  IMO a very nice feature. Since applications are launched by the panel,
  it's even clear that icons are real data-objects. With fvwm-1 and the
  FvwmFileMgr it wasn't really clear wether an icon is yet a file or an
  iconified window.

  Drag'n'drop inside a Qt application isn't really difficult. 
  The filemanager is IMO a very nice and not too time consuming project.
  Who wants?


- mail client

  A really comfortable mailclient. IMO the most comfortable mailclient for X
  is yet XF-Mail. And the author is willing to port it to Qt when the
  KDE-project will start! But he asks for some assitance (for example for
  coding the small popups, etc.)


- easy texteditor

  Very small but important project. An editor that fits the needs of those
  who have to edit a textfile once in a month and didn't find the time yet
  to learn vi (and don't have the time to wait for x-emacs to start, and
  don't have the memory to use a motif-static-nedit, and don't have the
  cpu-power and memory to use a tk-monster like tkedit,...)

  Unfortunatly the Qt multiline-textwidget isn't available in Qt-1.0, but
  Troll-Tech already announced the beta-testing. So the texteditor can be
  started in a few weeks, too.


- Terminal

  Similar to the CDE terminal program. A kind of xterm with nice menu bar to
  set the font, exit, etc. Nice project, get the xterm sources and add a GUI
  with Qt!


- Image viewer

  The application that will be launced as default from the filemanager for
  gifs, jpegs and all this. Well, xv is shareware and really needs quite a
  long time for startup. But there is a plain Xlib programm without any
  menues or buttons called "xli". Get the sources and make it userfriendly
  with Qt!


- Lots of small other tools:

  * xdvi with Qt-Gui
  * ghostview with Qt-Gui
  * xmag with Qt-Gui
  * whatever you want


- Hypertext Help System

  A complete desktop environment needs a nice hypertext online help. I think
  the best choice would be HTML (>= 2.0). So a free Qt-based html-viewer
  would be a great idea. It might be possible to use the Arena-sources, but
  arena needs very long for startup. Maybe it would be best to start from
  scratch. Qt offers excellent functions for dealing with different fonts.
  For a help system HTML 2.0 is more than enough, some nice search function
  added and that's it. Since it is also possible to convert the obsolete
  troff man-pages to HTML, we can also integrate the original UNIX help
  system.

  BTW: There is a Troll Tech Qt-competition (look at their webpages). The
  best application (not only functionallity, but also design counts. Just
  porting an existing great application to Qt won't probably be enough :-( )
  wins $2000 and a few Qt on NT licenses (worth another $2000). They also
  mentioned a browser-project as an example. So a nice HTML-browser in Qt,
  ready in Janurary may be worth $4000 (This includes selling the unneeded
  NT licenses ;-) )


- Window Manager

  At the beginning, the KDE panel will work as an Fvwm-Module. When this is
  done, a lot of stuff can be stripped from the bloated fvwm window manager.
  We don't need anymore fvwm-menus, icon handling and zillions of
  configurable things. We need a small, realiable windowmanager. So maybe
  stripping all unncessary stuff from fvwm will make sense in a while. But
  this may come very last.

 
- System Tools

  Whatever a user, or you, might need. A graphical passwd comes to my mind.
  But probably there are a lot more! Maybe this will lead to a little system
  administration tool someday.


- Games

  We have yet a nice tetris game (an Qt example program). What is needed is
  a nice set of small games like solitaire (please with nice cards that can
  be really dragged!). There are several nice card games available for X,
  for example xpat2. So why not take the cards from them and write a real
  solitaire games, very similar to MS-Solitaire. I really had to install
  Wine sometimes just to play solitair, what an overhead! But other games
  are needed, too. Take xmris, pacman, etc. add a nice GUI. Or write some
  from scratch. Whatever you want :)


- Icons

  A set of nice icons. 3D-pixmaps are quite a good start (but why should the
  button be inside a pixmap, if we use a toolkit with buttons???)


- Documentation

  A documentation project is always a good thing to have. But before we
  should clearify how the hypertext help system should look like. We can
  then start with documentation pages in the chosen HTML-subset and for
  example use arean as help browser. Anyway we need some application to
  document first.


- Web-Pages / Ftp Server / Aministration

  We need a server for the files and webpages that inform about the state of
  the project. Especially what projects are currently worked on and what
  projects still wait for somebody to do them. I set up a preliminary
  homepage on
       http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/ettrich
  that just contains this posting yet and a few links. I may setup real
  webpages for the very beginning but I would be very happy if I could
  concentrate on discussion and coding. So if there is someone out there in
  the net who likes to design and maintain webpages, here is a job for him
  :)


- Discussion

  The most important topic :-) If you are interested please
  join the mailing list 
               kde@fiwi02.wiwi.uni-tuebingen.de
  Subscribing can be done by sending a mail with in *Body*:
               subscribe <your email address>
  to 
               kde-request@fiwi02.wiwi.uni-tuebingen.de.


- Applications

  When the KDE gets widely accepted, new (free) applications will hopefully
  be based on Qt, too, to fit with the comfortable and pleasant look and
  feel of the desktop.

  We may for example port LyX to Qt, so that a comfortable wordprocessor is
  available. But that is still in discussion in the LyX Team. 

  A nice vector-orientated drawing tool would also be fine. Well, Xfig is a
  powerful but ugly monster. But there is "tgif", a very powerful, easy to
  use but ugly program. The author don't like the idea of adding a Qt GUI
  for the menus, icons and scrollbars, since Qt is C++ and he wants to keep
  tgif plain C, since on some sites no C++ compiler is available. Well, the
  KDE doesn't really aim on these old and weird UNIX boxes (also I think a
  g++ is almost everywhere available). But maybe the tgif-author agrees when
  somebody else adds a nice GUI to tgif (the sources are free, don't know
  wether this is GPL). Since tgif yet implements its own GUI this shouldn't
  be too difficult. It's really easy with Qt to access plain Xlib
  functionality and functions, so not very much will have to be rewritten.
  Also C++ makes it very easy to include plain C code.

  What about an easy to use, nice newsreader similar to knews? Could also be
  integrated into the KDE. ... and ... and ... and.

  

So there is a lot of work (and fun) to do! If you are interested, please
join the mailing list. If we get about 20-30 people we could start. And
probably before 24th December the net-community will give itself another
nice and longtime-needed gift.

The stuff will be distributed under the terms of the GPL.

I admit the whole thing sounds a bit like fantasy. But it is very serious
from my side. Everybody I'm talking to in the net would LOVE a somewhat
cleaner desktop. Qt is the chance to realize this. So let us join our rare
sparetime and just do it!

Hopefully looking foward to lots of followups and replies!


Regards,

   Matthias Ettrich
   (ettrich@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de)




BTW: Usually these postings get a lot of answers like "Use a Mac if you want
a GUI, CLI rules!", "I like thousands of different widgets-libraries on my
desktop, if you are too stupid to learn them, you should use windoze", "RAM
prices are so low, I only use static motif programs", "You will never
succeed, so better stop before the beginning", "Why Qt? I prefer
schnurz-purz-widgets with xyz-lisp-shell. GPL! Check it out!", etc. Thanks
for not sending these as followup to this posting :-) I know I'm a
dreamer...

BTW2: You might wonder why I'm so against Tk. Well, I don't like the
philosophy: Tk's doesn't have a textwidget, for example, but a slow
wordprocessor. Same with other widgets. In combination with TCL the programs
become slow and ugly (of course there are exceptions). I didn't yet see any
application that uses Tk from C++ or C, although an API seems to exist.
TCL/TK is very usefull for prototyping. Ideal for example for kernel
configuration. And since Tk looks little similar to Motif, the widgets are
also quite easy to use. But I really don't like any TCL/Tk application to
stay permanantly on the desktop. And Qt is much easier (at least as easy) to
program. Check it out!

BTW3: I don't have any connections to Troll Tech, I just like their product
(look at the sources: really high quality!) and their kind of marketing:
free sourcecode for free software.