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Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] What do you guys like about Desktop Environments?
Le 23/12/2023 à 17:21, Martin Steigerwald a écrit :
> Didier Kryn - 23.12.23, 16:56:49 CET:
>> Le 23/12/2023 à 16:06, Antonio A. Rendina via Dng a écrit :
>>> I like the apps to be integrated and have the same visual
>>> widgets/colors, and I don't want to waste time to obtain this.
>>       I'm totally insensitive to this æsthetic. Further more, I consider
>> it a mean to force on the user a set of applications chosen by the DE
>> team.
> I like the flexibility to install any application and I still can.
>
> But I love the functionality of a lot of KDE applications. Gems like
> Krita, Gwenview, Okular, Konsole, Spectacle, KMyMoney they have just
> everything I need and them some. But that then some does not stand in my
> way. Lastly I tried out annotation feature in the screenshot app
> Spectacle. A breeze to use for quick annotations. I like how I can have a
> Konsole everywhere. Separately, in Dolphin file manger or in Kate for
> example.
>
> Those apps are not the same than just five years ago. In my opinion some of
> them outperform anything I have seen anywhere else so far. But I admit I
> have no up-to-date experience with GNOME, Windows or Mac OS X. Maybe
> things evolved as neatly or even better there. I somewhat doubt it,
> though, at least for my needs and use cases.
>
> If you have a ten year old impression of KDE applications… you don't know
> much about the current state I'd say. It has not been bad back then, but
> meanwhile it just got (much) better.
>
> Like for example multiple cursor editing and other new features Kate. The
> basic block editing has been there since a long time and I use it often
> enough to format things like markdown tables, anything that is based on
> columns instead of (just) lines. But meanwhile they have multiple cursors
> as well.
>
> Or Itinerary parsing train and other ticket information obtained from mail
> or QR code. They can scan the PDF of a ticket and make an appointment,
> enrich it with real time information in case you agree to access relevant
> internet servers of the service providers, show local maps of train
> stations and so on and so on. Also I can have Itinerary on desktop and/or
> Android phone.
>
> Plasma can adapt to multiple form factors quite nicely. I do not yet have
> a phone with Plasma Mobile, but it would be a nice thing to try out.
> Possibly with Postmarket OS.
>

     FWIW Konsole, Gnome-terminal, Xfce4-terminal, and even Roxterm are
pretty much as good. It might be possible to make Xterm just readable,
though I'm not sure, but I agree it would be anyway a painfull
configuration work.

    Concerning text edition I have been using Emacs or Emacs-like
editors since the beginning of the 80's and I haven't found a reason to
change. By the end of the 80's I tried to make sense of Vi but couldn't
find a usable tutorial, and, while observing Vi fans at work, they
looked to me like disabled. Nowadays, everytime I launch Emacs from a
terminal it writes a Dbus error message and fails to connect, but the
editor works fine. I enjoy the failure to connect since I dislike Dbus
(a common KDE/Gnome development, BTW) and I dislike the concept of an
Emacs server in general.

    Ah, just for the fun, I have replaced Kmahjongg, and yet another
one I used after it, with Xmahjongg; everytime you change, it takes just
a short time to get acustomed (~:

    Generally the improvements of applications I value are, of course,
a better/richer service, but also the reduction of dependencies. One
thing I particularly dislike in KDE or Gnome apps is the huge weight of
dependencies they carry, which is the cost for "integration". For the
things I write myself, I try to eliminate dependencies as much as I can
and I target minimalism.

    Regarding the comparison with MacOS, I'm pretty sure that KDE
provides a better productivity. But this is also true for free software
in general, eg: a Mac is not able to open an SVG file unless it is
reached through an URL. When such a file is attached to an email, the
mail agent doesn't even show it.

--     Didier