I love Qt. Really, not only it’s very integrated, and has a lot of high level functions, things like QString::split(QRegExp), and high level functions, in QSettings. It also has IMHO the best BiDi support, much better then the alternatives (IMHO).

Here is a small example:

Lets count the horrors in that screen shot (taken by running “LANGUAGE=he monodevelop on KUbuntu 7.10):

1. English translation, on RTL desktop.

2. In RTL mode, the toolbars are left aligned (should be right aligned)

3. The wizard’s next arrow points to the right (should be left)

4. Next/prev windows arrows in the menu point to the wrong direction (not visible in the screen shot)

(thank you wordpress for beeing lame, I did put that list inside a LTR paragraph, why is it RTL?)

Don’t get me wrong, KDE3 had some of those issues. But after 3-5 years of usage, someone had to fix them and that someone did. At KDE3 it was done so magically inside KDE3libs, that when Dolphin3 was released, I tried to find some bugs on it and fix them, but I found no visible bug. Then I looked at the code, to see who actually did that job, and I found that the code contains no logic to RTL desktops. Yes, writing KDE3 applications which are RTL aware, is trivial and done for you.

And now a tip for the developers: please run your Qt/KDE application with the “–reverse” command line switch. Thanks.

Continuing the saga of “kde licks balls, lets complain until someone fixes it”, I would like to ask el presidente to fix something really annoying in plasma.

Each plasmoid has a little frame/handle, which has some commands. The top command (which in rc1 has an icon that looks like “?”). You can drag this icon, it will move the plasmoid, and even rotate it. With some practice you will understand what to do to to issue each translation (getting too technical no? I can just imagine those transformation matrices now…)…

Anyway, while playing I noticed that I rotated the plasmoids too easily and when I wanted to align it (or rotate it by 2*pi*k or 360*k… ) and I found it was really hard. So my suggestion is: move and rotate the plasmoids by a discrete amount of pixles or degrees. Lets say, you can move them by 15 pixels (10, 20, whatever) and rotate them by 15 degrees. Then, if the user presses control, let them move them by a single pixel/degree.

IMHO it will feel more natural and less disturbing for the average joe/jane which will use plasma.

BTW, WP is sucking as an editor. Does anyone know a usable Qt4 blog application? I need Qt4 based, since such platform I can actually fix for having a decent BiDi support. Yes, Qt4 kicks ass, I know.