The GNOME Community Roadmap is a big-picture view of functionality we expect GNOME to include in short-term and long-term future. The roadmap is based on feedback from current GNOME developers and other community members. This roadmap shows the ideas and hopes of GNOME contributors for the near future.
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Member since:2005-06-29
If I would have been asked I would probably state it like this:
KDE 2.0 was build using a very good architecture for its time, and the demands of the time.
In the last 7 years, this architecture was used and extended, but probably showed some areas that it was laking in certain ways. Most of this stuff can be worked around, but it is not... esthetically pleasing.
I would compare it with the evolution of scientific theories (of course, the KDE APIs are not comparable in influence, or greatness of the folowing examples ;-)
Noone argues that Newtons Gravitation was not a great achievement, but over the time people found it could not explain certain effects. Some people made some changes to accomodate them, but..again...not in a nice way - until Relativity came, and we could suddenly explain most that we observe. (Though there might come a time that we again find it lacking and have to search for something new)
The KDE2/3 APIs have held a long time, and were very usefull, but now it was time to rethink some of the assertions that were underlying the design, and to come up with APIs that incorporate todays needs and state-of-the-art and that will hopefully prove as resilient as the last iteration.
But (somewhat) back on topic ;-)
I wish the GNOME project all the best, (I just must admit that my ignorance on details of GNOME keep me from directly commenting on the roadmap.)
Member since:2005-07-07
Does it denigrate Gnome to say KDE has a better infrastructure? I don't see why. Gnome has spend more work on usability, and it shows - in most area's, I think they're better at the usability level. Does that make KDE worse? Of course not, KDE is as usable, if not more than Windows and in many cases even Mac OS X.
Anyway, the infrastructure brought by KDE 2.x, and improved & fleshed out in KDE 3.x was and is great. But the developers now have 5 years experience with it, and thus much ideas for improvements. Also, computers became faster (thus more is possible) and of course, there are new requirements in many areas.
And, last but not least, the competition is catching up, so let's go to the next level ;-)
I think the systemwide spellcheck is a great example of this last point. I'm not sure when it was introduced exactly, I think KDE 3.0 (5 years ago). Since then, KDE's webbrowser, chat applications, email prog etc have had spellchecking.
Now, the competition has catched up - the firefox I'm typing this in, while at work, finally also has spelling check. So, KDE 4 will add gramar check to it's spellcheck, and automatic language detection. And others will follow, of course, so we'll think about something else for KDE 5.
Member since:
2006-12-24
Some of your assertions don't make much sense to me. You say that KDE got its infrastructure act together more than 7 years and "KDE 4.0 is going to bring the infrastructure to a whole new level." Well, from what I understand, KDE 4.0 is a major infrastructural reworking. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) So, what I don't understand is that if KDE's infrastructure was so perfect in the KDE 2.0 - 3.5 timeframe, why is the major reworking necessary now, beyond simply porting to Qt 4.x?
Don't get me wrong: I hope KDE 4.0 is a major success, and I wish KDE all the best. I simply find the fanboyism from some misguided KDE fans a bit tiresome. It is ok to love your chosen desktop without denigrating other desktops, no?