On Friday 10 October 2008, Chris Cannam wrote:
> Depending on KDE4 is not a proposition that just "sells itself".  None
> of the regulars here as far as I know actually uses KDE4.

True, though I most likely will eventually.

> OK, that's 
> not true -- Vlada does at least, and he's kind of almost regular here
> -- but certainly none of the regulars here has yet demanded that we go
> all out to improve integration with it.

All-out integration, no.  The only thing really quirky things about 
integration of the 1.x line are all on the Help menu as far as I've ever 
noticed.  We've had trouble getting our help found on different systems, and 
the report bug thing was never really designed for a KDE project that didn't 
intend to move under the KDE umbrella eventually, and didn't work very well 
for us.  A lot of that stuff, like the KAboutData, I don't really mind 
dispensing with anyway, because maintaining three different copies of all 
that stuff was a big pain in the ass anyway.

(Which reminds me that I need to gut the AUTHORS file, which is totally out of 
date, and come up with a new way to approach all of that unmaintainable mess.  
Probably through the wiki.  Must do before the big 200.  I'm starting the 
release note (very prematurely, admittedly) for 2.0.0, and spelling it out 
2.0.0 every time to try to avoid confusion with X11 Rosegarden's versioning.  
I'm starting to like the idea of just calling it version 200 with no dots, to 
make damn sure there is never any confusion.  200, 210, 213, whatever, it 
isn't really any more radical than Ubuntu's bizarrely unconventional 
numbering scheme, and it strikes me as one very solid way to avoid the whole 
issue we used to approach by appending that stupid -4 to our name.  Just a 
random thought at this point though.  Opinions?)

Arguing for KDE vs. Qt though, I'd be surprised if you hadn't noticed what a 
personal crisis this has been for me.  I'm resigned to a pure Qt4 Rosegarden, 
but I've never advocated it except when trying to tow the party line.  This 
was so big it took me months to put my game face on and suck it up, and I am 
even now not 100% convinced I will be able to tolerate this brave new 
Rosegarden.  It's something I have to live with, because the tide toward Qt4 
is so clear, and because you're pulling it that way, Chris, and everyone is 
right behind you.

I know you're not a man to argue strongly about much of anything, Chris, but 
the plain fact is that you're the administrator in charge of supervising 
development, and I'm the administrator in charge of damn well everything else 
by now, as I've kept expanding to fill the vacuum.  If you had to take over 
everything I do, our rate of progress would grind to a halt, and the reverse 
might even be more true, because it's almost staggering when I consider the 
programming jobs I've actually managed to accomplish in spite of my abysmal 
ignorance and inexperience.  Your opinion on development matters carries a 
great deal of weight, and I'm going to vote with you most of the time by 
default.  I'm your adviser on these matters, and I supervise development in 
kind of a middle manager way during your many long absences, but you're the 
man who is ultimately responsible for getting that job done, and if you're 
even just more fond of the Qt4 approach without being strongly behind it, 
then it wins.  Besides, you were behind this more strongly than you think if 
you didn't see how the mere thought that we would do anything but port to 
KDE4 turned my world completely upside down.  I probably even cried.

On the other hand, it's very fair to say Guillaume was always the KDE guy, and 
you've always known more about Qt.  Even Guillaume wasn't going to aim at 
KDE4 for that matter.  There's just no way I can argue for trying to get 
someone to do something they're not very well-equipped to do, and no way I 
can do it myself, so I've been trying to tow the line and let it all go, and 
have largely succeeded.

It's not really as much of an issue now as it was when we began, or actually 
before we began, because I've seen so many things in the KDE porting guide 
that just say "use QWhatever."  Plus I'm still waiting for KDE to become 
inhabitable, and I'm not terribly impressed yet.  I know it's a hard job for 
those guys, and I'm not doing a damn thing to help them, so I'm trying to 
just stay out of it and be quiet and hope for the best.  4.1 is enough of an 
improvement over 4.0 that I don't think my hope is totally unfounded.

It all comes down to the sum total of a lot of things that might be acceptable 
alone, but taken together, it's just not time to move in yet.  I have nothing 
to gain by being an early adopter.

If this KDE guy is interested in a review, I could go have a look at whatever 
update I downloaded a few days ago, but I really don't want to rip anybody's 
guts out when I'm not doing a damn thing to contribute to a solution.

Also, a final thought tacked on here at the bottom.  I've never consulted 
kde-devel because they don't know how to do anything with our internals.  
Rosegarden isn't a generic application, but a highly specialized and complex 
one that solves a number of insanely difficult problems that require all 
kinds of knowledge about all kinds of arcane subjects.  I work with a lot of 
black boxes, and try to put them together in new or better ways.  My KDE or 
Qt ignorance doesn't hold me back nearly so much as my STL ignorance.  Most 
of the code I'm personally responsible for is already compiling in the port 
too, for that matter.  In fact, I think all of it is, even if some bits of it 
are trapped inside other things that are suffering from breakage that's not 
within my area.
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre 

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