Running k3b without KDE

[Christopher Browne]

On 12/15/05, William O'Higgins Witteman <william.ohiggins-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> There are a couple of KDE apps that I'd like to run, but I don't want to
> actually use KDE - I use OpenBox on the desktop and wmii on the laptop.

In effect, KDE *is* the apps; if you think you don't want to use it,
you, by inference don't want to use them.

You're probably falling into the trap of imagining KDE to be a window
manager.  That is Not The Case.
http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdebase/faq/introduction.html

There are two perspectives that *are* legitimate:

1.  KDE is an application development framework.
2.  KDE is a set of applications that USE that application development
framework.

If you don't want to use KDE, then you obviously *don't* want the
application framework or the applications.  You can't have apps
without the framework.

The same applies to GNOME, in pretty well identical ways;
s/KDE/GNOME/g as needed.

What seems quite unfortunate is that both the GNOME and KDE projects
fail *desperately* when documenting themselves in that they fail to
say what they imagine a "desktop environment" to be.

People commonly fail to grasp what GNOME and KDE actually are, and it
seems to me that the failure to say "and this is what a desktop and a
desktop environment is" is a prime cause.  A window manager is not a
desktop environment and a desktop environment is not a window manager,
and it strikes me as a major failing in both projects that there is
not enough proper documentation that people so commonly conflate the
notions.

> I'm playing with amarok and k3b (and maybe kino later), and after a bit
> of poking amarok works fine, but k3b is being an idiot.  When I start
> the program it complains about not being able to find growisofs, and
> that I should install dvd+rw-tools.  That'd be fine, if it wasn't there,
> but it is.  The search paths of k3b include /usr/bin, and since that's
> where growisofs is, you'd think that would be enough.
>
> Better still, if I fire up Xnest and launch KDE in a nested window, and
> then launch k3b, it finds growisofs just fine.  So I'm at a loss.  I
> don't really want to run it in Xnest every time because 1) hello,
> clunky!, and 2) I haven't found a nice way to open up an Xnest window,
> launch KDE in it and then launch k3b.  Also, the KDE tries to render
> nice, pretty anti-aliased fonts at 1024x768 and Xnest scales things just
> enough to give me jaggies.
>
> Anyone have any suggestions?  Thanks.

None of these are KDE issues.  They are issues as to what "helper
applications" k3b depends on happen to be installed.

I seriously doubt Xnest will do anything to help; if it did, that
would demonstrate something seriously wrong with KDE components, as
the graphical bits operate as X clients.
--
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absolutely no good." -- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
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