Kevin Kofler (16 June 2020 12:08) >>> What "shiny new features"? All that a real-world application such as >>> KWrite really needs from the operating system has been there at >>> least since the 1990s, possibly since the 1970s.
Edward Welbourne wrote: >> and I guess it's been in Qt for several releases now, so why would >> someone with those needs care about upgrading to Qt 6 ? Kevin Kofler (16 June 2020 19:25) > Because all KDE applications will have to get ported to Qt 6 soon. So, just to remind you, we were talking about ancient versions stretching back to the start of the century, when there was no C++11 compiler available for anyone to use to compile any recent version of Qt, much less KDE. So those supporting such antiques need to (either stick with an old version of Qt or) port the whole GNU tool-chain - which might be problematic if the GNU tool-chain is exploiting new features of modern processors in its optimisations; are you telling me the modern GNU tool-chain (modern enough to support C++11) actually continues to support the ancient architectures back to start of the century ? I'd imagine that would cripple its ability to make the most of modern processors, but I admit I don't know how the GCC suite is organised. I consider it unrealistic to claim that folk using such antiques - that have no features more recent than the 1990s - would actually care about updating the version of KDE they're running on their ancient systems; and I doubt there's been an up-to-date version of KDE that works on such antiques in the last several years. So you're complaining about us not supporting a scenario that isn't even vaguely possible to support. Or did you just forget context ? Because I also wonder how many KDE users there are on Win 7. I'm guessing it's a tiny minority of the Win 7 world. Of course, those using KDE-derived apps on Win 7 needn't be running KDE, but then the "security fixes required for inclusion in KDE" constraint isn't a problem for those versions of the apps. > You seem to be completely disconnected from how things work in the Free > Software community, and only seeing the commercial viewpoint. And you seem to be completely committed to misinterpreting everything in the lest charitable light. I just hope that's an illusion, and not your real intent. You also seem to be utterly impervious to one of the basic truths of cross-platform software support: old platforms are not free. Maintaining the existing code for the old platform comes at a cost; and adding code to support new things for the old platform comes at a cost, which is often *significantly* higher than adding the same new feature to newer platforms (because the feature is designed to make the most of what those new platforms make easy). This is just as true for Free Software projects as it is for commercial. Any project with a finite supply of developers is bound to drop support for antiques sooner or later. Eddy. _______________________________________________ Development mailing list Development@qt-project.org https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development