Tagged: kde

Image management in KDE


Why can’t KDE have a **single** photo management solution? I’ve often been a proponent of the “Choice is Good (TM)” philosophy, but I have to admit, when it comes to image management in KDE (or Linux, in general), I really feel lost. For KDE to emerge as a strong contender in the desktop arena, it needs to be focused and tightly integrated. It needs to //endorse// SOME image management package. Let me talk briefly about the various tools available to give you an idea of the situation:

* [[http://www.digikam.org/|digikam]]: From the website //digiKam is a simple digital photo management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a “snap”. The photos can be organized in albums which can be sorted chronologically, by directory layout or by custom collections. An easy to use interface is provided that enables you to connect to your camera and preview, download and/or delete your images.// Digikam also includes its own photo viewer.
* [[http://www.jalix.org/projects/showimg/|ShowImg]]: From the website //ShowImg is a feature-rich image viewer for KDE including an image management system. It is highly configurable and supports numerous image formats.//
* [[http://ktown.kde.org/kphotoalbum/|KPhotoAlbum]]: This is basically a tool to help you tag your page (people, places, events, dates) and later, find them.
* [[http://gwenview.sourceforge.net/|Gwenview]]: From the website — //Gwenview is a fast and easy to use image viewer for KDE.//
* [[http://kde-apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=222x223x224|Several other]] [[http://kde-apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=224|editors]], [[http://kde-apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=222|viewers]] and [[http://kde-apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=223|tools]]

So, what should I use? Digikam seems to be a one stop shop — capture, tag, search — all in one package. But why does it have its own viewer? Why can’t it just use ShowImg or Gwenview? Why doesn’t KPhotoAlbum integrate with Digikam? Why do they all have to use different backends? Why don’t //any// of them have built in support for flickr? [[http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kipi/|Kipi]] is great, but lets make it a strength and not a weakness. Don’t reinvent the wheel for routine tasks — instead, fill in the niches.

I actually feel bad about ranting like this, in case someone is about to suggest that “this is open source, if its your itch, you should scratch it”. I would, except that I don’t have the time/skill/experience to get into image management/editing at this point. Even the GNOME world is not much better. There is F-Spot, GPhoto, GQview, GThumb and plethora of others.

So KDE folks, try to streamline KDE’s image mangement offerings in time for KDE4 — it will go a long way in making it the best desktop ever!

Konqueror Wishlist


I have talked about my [[http://floatingsun.net/blog/2005/10/10/240/|dabblings]] with Konqueror [[http://floatingsun.net/blog/2005/10/11/244/|earlier]]. However, there are still a lot of things I find missing in Konqueror, as a result these days I end up running one instance of both on my desktop :-( Here are some of the things I //really// wish Konqueror had:

* **[[http://del.icio.us]] integration**: Bookmark management in Konqueror is great (I specially love the Kopete bookmark plugin that integrates with Konqueror), but come on, a modern browser **without** social bookmarking support? You gotta be kidding me!
* **Extending Konqueror**: Make Konqueror scriptable, or extendible. Keeping the binary tight and bundling the best features with the core are great ideas, but you can’t please all the people all the time right? So let people extend Konqueror — write plugins, extensions and so on. You know what, just support XUL and Firefox plugins — that way you reduce the barrier to entry for noobs significantly :-)
* **Better multimedia support**: KDE has always been great at doing multimedia stuff. I routinely use kaffeine over mplayer. KDE has also been great at re-using components, and embedding applications. The entire KParts framework is awesome. So why, oh why, is it so hard to view multimedia in Konqueror? Why does it try to use my Firefox Mplayer plugin when it can just potentially embed a Kaffeine part? I want Apple Trailers, Google Video, You Tube, Raaga.com — everything to work **out of the box**.
* Talk to Google: I’m not sure if this is a problem at Konqueror’s end or Google’s, but Konqueror still has a really hard time handling GMail. It just doesn’t look and feel as nice as it does in Firefox. And Maps? My disk starts thrashing, the memory hits the swap and everything just crawls to a grinding halt. Please, Google, KDE folks, talk to each other. Lets see some synergy! :-)

I’ll add more as I think of them.

Priceless quote from Linus


I’m not a desktop-wars fanatic (I //am// a KDE user, though), but [[http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00021.html|this]] is just priceless:

> I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

> This “users are idiots, and are confused by functionality” mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do.

> Please, just tell people to use KDE.