Re: [seul-edu] Fwd: [Kde-edu]Welcome to the new kde-edu

[Manuel Gutierrez Algaba <algaba@gmx.net>]

On Sun, 26 Nov 2000, Max Moritz Sievers wrote:
> KDE-EDU is back! We recreated KDE-EDU for mainly two purposes:
> 
> 1. To have a forum for questions and discussions on how to use KDE in
>  schools or other educational environments. As we want to get as many
>  Windows user as possible to use KDE un Linux/UNIX as their default
>  working platform, we want to give support every effort to use KDE in
>  educational facilities.
> 
> 2. To talk about new KDE programs that can be used or are indented for
> educational purposes. Therefore, I will regulary check apps.kde.com for
> such programs and post them here.
> We also strongly encourage people to write or port such programs or
>  report about existing ones here. For porting purposes also have a look
>  at the "kde-devel" and "kde2-porting" mailinglists.

Personally, I've never liked this new trend of having KDE, GNOME
"propietary" programms. For these reasons:

- People tend to write programms difficult to "port" to other
desktops. Each program  usually has at least two parts "Interface"
and "Engine". Regretfully, most programmers melt those two parts
into a single one,
making it difficult to reuse the "engine". This is specially true
in the KDE, GNOME series. Sometimes a "GNOME" programm relies so
much in GNOME that you can either take GNOME as a whole or forget
that programm, or at the very least, have all the libs. The ideal
would be to have independent engine and several GUI, perhaps
thru a independent XML spec.

- Secondly, it "forces" programmers to use it. Well, sometimes it
seems that if you don't write for such desktops your product is
less serious. Or on the other hand, any "stupid" programm or
applet enters directly "the Valhalla" or the paradise, just because
it integrates well with the desktop. So people programm lots
of useless applets (CPU load,... ). This leads to a trivialization
of Linux, a kind of Windowzation of Linux.  To have more programms
never is bad, but if all of them "corrupt" the Unix soul:
simple, combinable, it does a specific and unique task and it
does good, well if those programms corrupt that philosophy
it's clear that Linux will die in the long run, a death by
too much success, but a death after all.

- Thirdly, it ignores some other previous approaches. 
What happened to Java ? Any app developed in the form
of applet can be run in any platform (more or less ) . And 
it unifies everything into a single language : Java. 
Well, and there's not only Java, there're more refined stuff
like Tcl/Tk or python. KDE or GNOME programmers will be tempted
to use C++ ( I know about pygnome). Even so, all the rest of 
python flavours like wxwindows, pygtk or tkinter will be 
more or less acceptable depending on their interaction with
KDE or GNOME. It happens that tkinter or wxwindows have advantages
over pygtk, for example.

I'm the author of 
vsep.seul.org

And i have the slightest intention to move to KDE or GNOME,
what for ? 

I'd say more, half of the visits to vsep have been of Windows
users!

In fact, I'm thinking about providing a .zip  for them. (At the
end, in all my projects, I have to provide a .zip).

Windows is bad, but much worse is to see how a new "Windows"
grows inside of Linux and it kills it.

Besides, GNOME/KDE doesn't help education, they need much
more powerful computers than "raw" desktops.

Educative programm requirements have been always independent
of the O.S. . A good educative programm is good if it's helpful,
having a "cheese" or "metal" theme of the buttonry doesn't make
it more helpful.


--- 
Regards/Saludos
Manolo
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