smls wrote:@Manolete

Note that the Calligra team doesn't consist of dozens of developers sitting around bored all day just waiting for ideas about what additional applications users might like to see in Calligra.
[...]
So telling them that you think a completely different application would theoretically make more sense in an office suite than the one they're working on, won't do any good...

I know, I know, but that "blackmail" -even with a smile- can't be accepted like a dictator's word, otherwise there would not be things like "feature requests" if users weren't allowed to suggest things; as far as I know this is still free (LIBRE) software land, no? There must be always the liberty of users to suggest, and of course the liberty of developers to say "Sorry we don't have enough manpower" or even "No, we don't think yours is a good idea". But I think we are deviating from te debate.

smls wrote:PS: Graphics apps are used in work-places... For example, I've used graphics apps (both raster and vector) in the office before, to quickly draw up or retouch technical illustration my boss needed for presentations, etc...
And professional visual artists / designers / digital painters use graphics apps in the office all the time...

Some offices do, I think most don't: lawyers, economists, public administration workers, social security office workers, assurance companies, banks, etc, etc. don't; they usually just need a corporative logo in their mails and documents and not much more. But in the case of enterprises like yours, don't you include many of all those graphic materials you make in your website all the time as well? You would say those content updates are done with CMS? My experience is that medium to big companies don't even do those content updates to their websites because they have a contract with a web/graphic design studio that does all that work, hence my opinion of apps like Krite and Karbon not too related with office. Most of the graphics a business company makes are made with Word, Excel, & al (even Google Docs, can do them).
So, concluding, as I said, I think complex drawing (vectorial or bitmap) programs aren't more related to office software than web design ones. Krita and Karbon "marry" better with a web desing program than with a database-related one; and perhaps Krita and Karbon should be splitted in a new suite, a graphic design suite, which included a web design app.

Anyway, as I answered to TheBlackCat, to be honest, I'm not concerned at all by this categorization into office or design related stuff, just wanted to express my concordance with the original poster's suggestion as I see it quite reasonable (always considering Calligra that "tutti frutti" suite I mentioned).


I'm not a web designer, BTW, I work now as a photo retoucher and restorer who uses mainly Rawtherapee, Gimp and Photoshop, pure KDE, as you see.

Manolete wrote:

TheBlackCat wrote:I don't think this is a good idea for one reason: calligra is not designed for development, kdevelop is.

That's an important nuance: what is web design/development? Is it design or development? If you consider it the first then is obviously more related to a suite which has Krita and Karbon than to a suite with code editors and such. If you think the opposite then a development suite is the right place for a web editor.

My point isn't about how it is used, the point is what the underlying technology is suited for. The unifying theme of the calligra applications is that they make use of the calligra framework. Is this framework suited for making web pages? I sincerely doubt it. The kdevelop framework, however, is.

Even if the user never writes a line of code, the underlying system still needs to be able to deal with code. At least my understanding is that calligra is not designed this way. kdevelop is. You can build whatever sort of gui you want on top of either, the question is whether the underlying software tools needed to make the gui work are available. It doesn't matter how great the UI is if it can't do the job.

Manolete wrote:I know, I know, but that "blackmail" -even with a smile- can't be accepted like a dictator's word, otherwise there would not be things like "feature requests" if users weren't allowed to suggest things; as far as I know this is still free (LIBRE) software land, no?

We users are allowed to suggest and discuss as much as we want... The question is, whether anything will happen as a consequence of it.

Now, if you suggest to a Krita developer (who works on Krita because he cares about it as an application, not merely because it's a part of Calligra) how a certain feature in Krita could be improved, there's a decent chance that it will be implemented.

However, if you suggest to him that a completely different application would make more sense than Krita, nothing will happen, because Krita is what he cares about - whether it is the most suitable app for an office suite or not, is irrelevant.
Or, to express it differently: Discussing what app would make the most sense in Calligra from a top-down point of view is futile, because development work is not allocated in a top-down fashion.

That's all I'm saying, I'm not trying to "forbid" you to suggest/discuss things...

Manolete wrote:Most professional web design studios I know have their designers on one side and their programmers on the other; the first ones use Dreamweaver, Illustrator (Karbon), Fireworks (Krita?), Photoshop, (equivalent non existent in KDE?), and/or some others; the second ones use their IDE when aditional code in Java, PHP or any of those fancy languages in fashion is needed (not always).

Yes, this is also my experience.
I did an internship at a small web development company once, and for each website they used to hire an external artist to do the design. He/she would do it purely in Photoshop, and then send the resulting Photoshop image(s) (and additional guidelines) to the developers. The developers would then implement the design in CSS, as a theme to be used with their PHP-based content management system which was developed in-house. Both for implementing and extending their content managment system, and for implementing the individual themes from (sliced) Photoshop images, they used only text/code editors.
So, all in all, only a general-purpose graphics app and general-purpose code editors were used to create professional websites.

So where exactly would your proposed Calligra web design app fit into this?

If you want to focus on the visual design, what exactly would the app be able to to that can't already be done with Karbon and Gimp or other general-purpose graphics apps?

If on the other hand you want to focus on the development part, it would be an IDE-based allication so (as TheBlackCat has explained) the most sensible technical foundation would be KDevelop/KDevPlatform, not the Calligra framework. Also, how would it be different from Quanta (which unfortunately doesn't seem to be developed anymore)?

So in either case, I really don't see how a "web design" app would make sense in Calligra... But maybe I'm still somehow misunderstanding you?

What the original poster asks for seems to be more of an app for web design newbies who are scared to use a real content management system, because they think it will be too difficult. but I think that's the wrong answer... The right answer for those newbies is to find a web host that already has a simple, easy-to-use content managment system pre-installed, and then simply use that.

I am against too. I think that I wrote many times how many years KDE user I am (from when it came out) and KOffice was never accepted or better never was so useful. I had to use StarOffice on OS/2 and than on Linux and...and now I ma using LibreOffice and for me works because at work I have MAC MSOffice and it is not bad for converting Word or PowerPouint to LibreOffice files or vice versa. With KOffice NEVER worked.
And why now start to "play" wit html editor? IMO it is easier to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript and use Bluefish for easy writing and works. Quanta was very good but 3+ years listening about that is not ready yet has many users enough.

Thanks.