Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Has semantic-desktop really become compulsatory for kmail?

[Zeerak Waseem]

On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:53:04 +0100, Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk>  
wrote:

> On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:19:43 +0100, Zeerak Waseem wrote:
>
>> But I do find it silly, that the various applications that aren't
>> dependent of the DE, to require a dependency of the DE. It just seems
>> a bit backwards to me :-) I simply don't understand.
>
> That just shows that they are still partially dependent on the DE, KMail
> also needs various KDE libraries. KDE was designed as a cohesive DE, not
> just a bunch of applications with a common look and feel. KDE apps are
> intended to be run on a KDE desktop, anything else is a nice bonus.
>
>

Indeed, and it is a noble pursuit.
But from a marketing aspect, it would make more sense to have things that  
aren't -vital- for the app, unlike kde-libs in this case, to be soft (is  
this the correct term?) dependencies.
Both aspects could be satisfied by having symantic-desktop as an optional  
dep. It's not a vital function for kmail to be able to tag and index all  
the files on the computer (which is what the symantic-desktop does if I  
understand correctly), it's a nifty thing for KDE users, and soon probably  
Gnome users as well, but for anyone else, it's a nifty thing -if- they  
feel the need for it. Much like most other bits of software :-)

In the end there isn't a right or wrong, but just a standpoint. Some don't  
mind the bloat (we can agree that it's bloat if you're just going to  
disable the function as soon as it's been installed, right?) and don't  
consider it to be the slightest bit akin to bloat, whilst to others it's  
an unnecessary feature forced on them (mainly thinking of the people not  
using kde, but also those kde-users that just disable it) and thus becomes  
bloat.

-- 
Zeerak