KRunner and GNOME Do: the run command evolves [LWN.net]

KRunner and GNOME Do: the run command evolves

Posted Feb 15, 2009 12:54 UTC (Sun) by fb (subscriber, #53265)
Parent article: KRunner and GNOME Do: the run command evolves

I really enjoyed this article as I didn't know about Gnome-do yet.

G-Do seems to be a GTK/Gnome version of Katapult. For me, Katapult was one of the two the most useful and beautiful novelties in KDE (the other being Yakuake).

However for one reason or another, Katapult was dropped and KDE4 brought us (a new) Krunner. Which lacks the simplicity and the beauty of Katapult: just display a huge icon of what you are about to run.

The "Katapult -> KRunner" transition represents, for me, many of the things that went wrong with KDE4: the new version is far worse than the previous.

- The new version is visually cluttered, while the older one was absolutely to the point.

- The new version has worse key binding defaults (alt-f2 against super-<space>)

- the new version is functionally worse: krunner won't always focus the one and only selection.

- the previous version, despite having a "k" in the name, actually had (i) a pronounceable name (ii) that referred to catapult, whereas something that reads "cruner" doesn't actually wins any hearts or minds. And yes name that makes some sense matters, specially when showing the system to non-technical users.

(Hum, sorry for the grumpiness about Krunner, but I still can't figure it out how they could change one interface for the other).

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KRunner and GNOME Do: the run command evolves

Posted Feb 19, 2009 9:10 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"The "Katapult -> KRunner" transition represents, for me, many of the things that went wrong with KDE4: the new version is far worse than the previous."

Your comparison is flawed. Krunner is not a replacement for Katapult, it's a replacement for the old KDE Run-dialog. IIRC Katapult was a third-party app. If the developer of Katapult decided not to port his app to KDE4, that's his choice.

"- The new version is visually cluttered, while the older one was absolutely to the point. "

Um, Krunner looks very, very basic. It's just a textbox where you can enter text. Results are then displayed as icons and text. It couldn't really be any more uncluttered.

"- The new version has worse key binding defaults (alt-f2 against super-<space>) "

Krunner uses the old run-dialog shortcut, since that is what it replaces. That said, you can easily change it to something else (I use Alt+Space).

KRunner and GNOME Do: the run command evolves

Posted Feb 19, 2009 10:30 UTC (Thu) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]

""Your comparison is flawed. Krunner is not a replacement for Katapult, it's a replacement for the old KDE Run-dialog. IIRC Katapult was a third-party app. If the developer of Katapult decided not to port his app to KDE4, that's his choice.""

From the perspective of an end user. Krunner is the only replacement for Katapult. Oh, well, to be honest I should say that it is the only _KDE_ replacement for it, as I now learned about this Gnome-Go, and that Launchy is now available for Linux.

Second, the point with KDE4 is right on the mark, the application is not available anymore due to the fact that that the underlying system forced an application rewrite.

Perhaps you are interested in discussing _if_ and (if it's the case) _who_ is responsible for this. I am not. As a KDE user, what matters to me is that I lost this incredible tool, and was left with something worse as a result of this upgrade. And as I said, that pretty much sums my personal experience with KDE4 so far.

""
Um, Krunner looks very, very basic. It's just a textbox where you can enter text. Results are then displayed as icons and text. It couldn't really be any more uncluttered.
""

If you are saying this, I would guess that you never used Katapult, or Gnome-Go for that matter.

Katapult had no buttons, no clickable elements, no text box, no empty space beneath reserved to display icons. Since it had no focus (actually it had one and only one), it would never fail to launch (when the user hit <enter>) because somehow the focus had gone wrong.

KRunner and GNOME Do: the run command evolves

Posted Feb 19, 2009 12:49 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"From the perspective of an end user. Krunner is the only replacement for Katapult."

You might think that, but Krunner is a replacement of the Run-dialog. If you compare Krunner to it's predecessor (the run-dialog), you would see that it's leaps and bounds better than it's predecessor is. The fact that you decide to compare it to completely unrelated app makes your comparison flawed.

"Second, the point with KDE4 is right on the mark, the application is not available anymore due to the fact that that the underlying system forced an application rewrite."

Maybe you should complain to the Katapult-developer then? Things change, KDE included. KDE-devels are not responsible for every single KDE-app out there.

"If you are saying this, I would guess that you never used Katapult, or Gnome-Go for that matter. "

The complaint was that "Krunner is visually cluttered". It's not. Now, it might be that Katapult or some other tool is even less cluttered that Krunner is, but that does not mean that Krunner is cluttered. Like I said, It's just a textbox.

"Katapult had no buttons"

By default, Krunner has two buttons (IIRC). Does two buttons mean that it's "cluttered"?

"no clickable elements"

Just because something is clickable, does not mean that it's "cluttered".

[quote]no empty space beneath reserved to display icons."

Krunner only has space for icons when you actually type something and it's displaying icons. In untyped state, it's just a textbox.

If you so love Katapult and hate Krunner, then maybe you should contact the Katapult-developer and urge him to port his app. Or maybe you should write one yourself.