Re: Not minimalism.

Post #105,114 by deSitter 6/6/03 11:17:19 AM Reply	Re: Not minimalism. I like KDE because you can run individual parts of it semi-standalone - so I can be in Blackbox and fire up Konqueror with no side issues. IOW it's as minimal or maximal as you like. And, it has a very simple programming model. It's Windows done correctly. There are still issues in 3.1, but every release shows big improvement. ARTs is still lagging in stability. -drl
Post #105,163 by pwhysall 6/6/03 3:32:03 PM Reply	Ask Scott about panels. Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #105,284 by pwhysall 6/8/03 8:08:39 AM Reply	On another note. KDE3.1 is much more usable than 3.0, but there are still two large bones of contention for J. Random Peter. Firstly, the control centre is, quite frankly, on crack. Secondly, I can't control font hinting at all. All I can choose is whether or not to use antialiasing, and whether to change the subpixel ordering from RGB to BGR and so on. Application nits mainly centre on KMail's glacial IMAP speed and inability to create rules that work with IMAP folders. Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #105,300 by deSitter 6/8/03 11:20:22 AM Reply	Re: On another note. I agree the Control Center is not that swift - but YaST is vastly improved, and qualifies as a worthwhile piece of software. I don't understand your issue with font hinting - you can even choose vertical pixel order (my Toshiba has that) and an exclude range for AA (say, you don't want fonts below 6 points to be antialiased). Of course, for this to work, the X server has to be set to the proper DPI - the default seems to be 72 DPI and that is too low. I had hand edit the kde3 Xservers file for that. And yes, slowness is an issue that is covered up by fast hardware. On my older Toshiba, the performance is marginal and certainly not as good as Windows. That is why I usually run fragmentary KDE - just the apps I need run from Blackbox or Windowmaker (er, GNUStep). -drl
Post #105,302 by pwhysall 6/8/03 11:27:03 AM Reply	Re: On another note. I agree the Control Center is not that swift - but YaST is vastly improved, and qualifies as a worthwhile piece of software. YaST's goodness or otherwise does not ameliorate the utter crackrock nature of the KDE control centre. There are Too Many Damn Options. No-one and I mean NO-ONE needs an option to alter the contrast of the colour scheme. Bin it. I don't understand your issue with font hinting - you can even choose vertical pixel order (my Toshiba has that) and an exclude range for AA (say, you don't want fonts below 6 points to be antialiased). Of course, for this to work, the X server has to be set to the proper DPI - the default seems to be 72 DPI and that is too low. I had hand edit the kde3 Xservers file for that. The GNOME2 font control panel allows you to select full, medium, slight or no hinting. You cannot do this in KDE, no way, no how. FWIW, Debian's X setup is 100 DPI by default. And yes, slowness is an issue that is covered up by fast hardware. On my older Toshiba, the performance is marginal and certainly not as good as Windows. That is why I usually run fragmentary KDE - just the apps I need run from Blackbox or Windowmaker (er, GNUStep). I don't much care about performance. Athlon XP 1800+, 512MB RAM, 7200RPM ATA133 disk. Everything runs well enough :) Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #105,325 by deSitter 6/8/03 6:29:08 PM Reply	Neener I got a new Thinkpad by fortuitous circumstance (I "sacrificed" my old one - gave it to the new sales manager) - P4 2.2, 512 RAM, 40Gb 7200 disk. I also worry not about hardware :) The GNOME2 thing about fine grained AA is intriguing. I may break down and install it. Dammit Peter! -drl
Post #105,326 by pwhysall 6/8/03 6:37:10 PM Reply	GNOME font rendering preferences (570x505px PNG image) Here's a snapshot of the GNOME2 font rendering preferences panel: [image\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org/pics/tech/screenies/fontprefs.png\|\|GNOME2 Font Rendering Preferences panel\|\|] Note the ability to switch between None, Slight, Medium and Full. Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #105,327 by deSitter 6/8/03 6:39:12 PM Reply	Wow, nice -drl
Post #105,370 by pwhysall 6/9/03 11:13:44 AM Reply	More GNOME2 Font Goodness (273K PNG image) Fontilus in action on a work PC: [image\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org/pics/tech/screenies/fontilus.png\|\|Fontilus window and font details pane\|\|] Fontilus is an extension to the Nautilus file manager that gives you drag and drop font management. Yes, you can drag new fonts into that window and install them. A minor nit I have is that the font preview panel doesn't seem to respect my desktop font hinting preferences. This is more than offset by the little bit of history that some fonts have embedded. Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #105,372 by deSitter 6/9/03 11:27:10 AM Reply	Question Can you gang the toolbars? i.e. put the location window on the same bar as the menu and/or action button? You can't with Konqueror, which is a major annoyance. IE has a big plus here from my screen-greedy perspective. -drl
Post #105,376 by pwhysall 6/9/03 11:59:34 AM Reply	Unfortunately not. This is, I reckon, down to the layout-oriented design of the GTK2 toolkit. Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]

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