15 Aug
2018
15 Aug
'18
9:41 p.m.
On 08/14/2018 03:01 PM, andre_debian(a)numericable.fr wrote:
Somebody told me on tnis list, that TDE was based on
Icewm.
(if I understood correctly).
Chuckling.... (you didn't)
That would be the same as saying KDE was based on IceWm. IceWm as well as
Blackbox (and its forks, Fluxbox, Openbox, etc.. -- the boxtops) were original
code. Neither were Qt3 based. TDE was a continuation of KDE3 based on Qt3.
Information and history on all are available online (Wikipedia is a good start).
While both IceWm and Blackbox (and its progeny) are very, very good window
managers, they are not "Desktop Environments". That is a critical distinction.
KDE and Gnome were considered desktop environments as they included a nice
set of integrated desktop applications (terminals, editors, calculators, color
choosers, file managers, etc..) with a common look and feel provided by the
toolkits they use (Qt3 in the case of KDE3 and Gtk+2 in the case of Gnome2, etc..)
TDE continued the mature KDE3 build on Qt3, that kde.org basically
"left-for-dead" when it went chasing this pipe-dream of Qt4 widgets making the
world a better place to live. (much as Gtk+3 did with Gtk+2/glade when it ran
off with GtkBuildable and css styling of objects)
TDE, in an inspired bit of forethought, was written with a somewhat toolkit
agnostic tqtinterface layer to prevent being limited to Qt3 only. However,
since KDE4 has become synonymous with "How to totally botch a desktop", the
impetus on toolkit flexibility has lost a bit of necessity. Qt3 was a robust
and well written toolkit and there nothing it lacks inherently and what
security and maintenance is needed is provided in-house.
So in short, TDE was a continuation of KDE 3.5.10 which was left for dead by
kde.org and relegated to desktop history. Now kde.org has abandoned KDE4 and
"left-it-for-dead" (though it that case, I doubt you will see anyone run in to
try and save it....)
Those intimately familiar with desktops, recognized what had been achieved
with KDE3 was special, in terms of flexibility and efficiency and the human
factors taken into the desktop design that minimize the keystrokes or
mouse-clicks required to do a task, and how that philosophy shared by the team
created not only the desktop interface itself, but was also evident in each of
the applications developed as a part of the project. KDE3 was the result of
that ground-up process, the desktop and all of the application that made up
the environment benefiting from that process in terms of usability and efficiency.
It is something that can never be captured in a "Let's move to a new toolkit
and port all the applications over" effort. Every time that has been
attempted, it invariably results is a "just get it ported and working... and
let's get a release out" mentality that cannot, and will never, achieve the
same efficiency or usability that a ground-up design did. Thus KDE4 couldn't
and Plasma never will match the elegance, the integration or the usabilty of
the KDE3 desktop environment.
TDE continues the best of KDE3 -- that's why you are here.
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.