FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] Re: Konqueror update (plus radical proposal)

["Helmar Rudolph" <helmar@xxxxxxxxx>]

> The only bad thing about qt is that it wasnt meant to be
> multithreaded like the app kit.  

Just two comments:

1) the idea AFAIAC is that you can actually USE that software
under BeOS so that you get the job done - something that isn't
the case right now, especially in the browsing department. So
this endeavour merely serves as a short term boost to the OS, but
not as a replacement for "native" BeOS apps that not only use the
app kit but that also have a different feature set (see below).

2) ports suck! Not from a technical perspective, but if you put
garbage in, that's what you'll get out. From my own experience,
most Windows and Linux apps are seriously deficient, largely
because they have been designed by developers not useability
experts. 

If we want the BeOS to succeed, we gotta step back and seriously
look at how software works now and how it should work tomorrow.
If we seriously did this, we'd come up with many improvements
-not really killer features, though- that make all the difference.
INMSHO Opera/Win is a prime example of an app that has so many
small niceties that no other browser comes even close to being so
useable and practical and... time-saving.

  <ignorant question> Are any of you aware of a multi-item
  clipboard where you can store image data, text, URLs,
  spreadsheet data, where you have the "stats info" as to when it
  was edit, to whom it was sent (or to which app it was pasted),
  etc...., and where you can open several clipboard files
  simultaneously, all of them fully drag and drop enabled?

  Maybe it exists under BeOS. It sure did under GEOS back in 1991
  and worked wonders. No killer, nothing to make headlines, but
  an essential little helper that assists us in working the way
  we really do rather than how some developer thought we would.
  
  Example: Sonork/Win has a nice clipboard that contains text,
  URL, file links, etc. But when I add e.g. a URL, it has not way
  of telling from whom that URL came, when it was added, to whom
  it was sent (which was the purpose of placing it there in the
  first place), so it's essentially a seriously useless data
  container. See what I'm getting at? No rocket science to create
  something like that, but it just ain't there.
  
So, no matter whether ports use the app kit or not, at least they
enable us to use the software, which in marketing terms means
"more stickiness", less reason to use another OS, more reason to
buy or support BeOS applications. If it allows us to build more
momentum and use that to create our own (superior) versions of it,
then why not?

Nice idea, Zenja! Let's see if there are any takers.

Helmar