Re: Future of Knowit

Max Cantor,  czwartek, 1 marca 2007:
>Naturally, like a good little Computer Science student, I squawked,
>"Avoid from-scratch rewrites!", and my regurgitated conventional logic
>is refuted before I even hit the "Send" button.  :P

>Since I haven't looked at the KnowIt source, I have no idea what the
>size of its codebase is, but I'm going to take Michal on his word and
>say that, if it's as small as it is, well, a from-scratch rewrite
>might not be such a bad idea!  (As though I were a senior, valued
>member of the KnowIt development team, I hand down opinions from on
>high!)
I know that optimistic yet unexperienced programmers (like me some time ago) 
believe they should rewrite each time they learn something new. I suffered 
from the same optimism, but it was some time ago (time passes...).

So, I believe I have strong, not just aesthetic reasons for rewrite:
1. Current file format is inflexible, XML should be used instead. That will 
allow for some other requested features: icons, keywords, non-tree links.
2. Managing notes in a tree is not a good idea. Instead, data should be 
managed separately, with tree being just one of a few possible visualizations 
(others are for example plain list or list by keywords).
3. Knowit was developed with Qt QTextEdit widget limitations in mind. As it 
didn't allow to paste links, external link list was added. In Qt 4.0 it is 
possible to add links (and even images and tables) to existing text, so the 
widget is obsolete.

All of this suggests rewrite in KDE 4. As I don't really have time to play 
with unstable KDE, I see three options left:
1. Do nothing
2. Wait for KDE 4 and start rewrite then
3. Rewrite now using Qt 4. Port to KDE 4 when it is available.
-- 
Michal Rudolf

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