C Mania: New C and Objective C Bindings For KDE

Dre writes: "Richard Dale recently announced that he has committed C bindings for the KDE3/Qt3 libraries to KDE's CVS. According to him, "The bindings wrap about 800 classes [and] 13,000 methods, with 200k [lines of code] of C/C++ generated." The same tool used to generate these C bindings can also generate Objective C and Java bindings, and Richard hopes to be able to consolidate the generation of these various KDE bindings (Java/Objective C/C) with one tool. In addition, pending the resolution of a dynamic linking problem with the Objective C bindings, both C and Objective C bindings for KDE 2.2.x/Qt 2.3.x will also be available from KDE CVS."

GNOME coders

[nomis80]

They dumbed down KDE's code enough for you to hack on it. ;-)

Re:GNOME coders

[sleepingduke]

The bindings aren't intended for coding directly in C. They are meant for implementing bindings for languages which can't call C++ directly such as PHP, Pascal or some Objective-C.

-- Richard Dale

Schweet! MacOS X native KDE apps!

[nellardo]

Hear me drool, but the prospect of MacOS X-native KDE applications is just too nice. Now, why do I post this comment here, instead of in the "Qt on MacOS X" thread? Quite simply, the prospect of Objective-C and/or Java bindings for KDE.

Don't get me wrong - I'm no great fan of ObjC (anything that pretends to be a "modern" language and relies on reference counting for "garbage collection is, well, that's a whole nother thread of its own) or Java (better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but it likes monolithic hierarchies too much for its own good). But what strikes me is the prospect of Cocoa applications that make use of KDE "applications" as components. Yowza! Need a calculator in your app? Drop in KDEcalc.

Where's KDEmacs when you need it? :-)

(and before people start screaming about how both Cocoa and KDE would like to control the main event loop, I'll just say "threads" and shut up).

Re:Schweet! MacOS X native KDE apps!

[Leimy]

WRONG!
I don't think KDE will work out of the box on OSX due to issues with dlopen. KDE takes advanatage of some very ELFish dlopen properties.

Its possible that dlopen can be improved in Darwin to allow KDE to do what it wants to there.

At least thats what the fink.sourceforge.net people are saying. I already have GNOME on my OSX desktop at work and can happilly switch between the Aqua desktop and GNOME at my leisure.

If only it were KDE instead of GNOME. :(