Am Donnerstag 16 August 2018 schrieb David C. Rankin:
>   That would be the same as saying KDE was based on IceWm. IceWm as well as
> Blackbox (and its forks, Fluxbox, Openbox, etc.. -- the boxtops) were
> original code. Neither were Qt3 based. TDE was a continuation of KDE3 based
> on Qt3. Information and history on all are available online (Wikipedia is a
> good start).
>
>   While both IceWm and Blackbox (and its progeny) are very, very good
> window managers, they are not "Desktop Environments". That is a critical
> distinction.
>
>   KDE and Gnome were considered desktop environments as they included a
> nice set of integrated desktop applications (terminals, editors,
> calculators, color choosers, file managers, etc..) with a common look and
> feel provided by the toolkits they use (Qt3 in the case of KDE3 and Gtk+2
> in the case of Gnome2, etc..)
>
>   TDE continued the mature KDE3 build on Qt3, that kde.org basically
> "left-for-dead" when it went chasing this pipe-dream of Qt4 widgets making
> the world a better place to live. (much as Gtk+3 did with Gtk+2/glade when
> it ran off with GtkBuildable and css styling of objects)
>
>   TDE, in an inspired bit of forethought, was written with a somewhat
> toolkit agnostic tqtinterface layer to prevent being limited to Qt3 only.
> However, since KDE4 has become synonymous with "How to totally botch a
> desktop", the impetus on toolkit flexibility has lost a bit of necessity.
> Qt3 was a robust and well written toolkit and there nothing it lacks
> inherently and what security and maintenance is needed is provided
> in-house.
>
>   So in short, TDE was a continuation of KDE 3.5.10 which was left for dead
> by kde.org and relegated to desktop history. Now kde.org has abandoned KDE4
> and "left-it-for-dead" (though it that case, I doubt you will see anyone
> run in to try and save it....)
>
>   Those intimately familiar with desktops, recognized what had been
> achieved with KDE3 was special, in terms of flexibility and efficiency and
> the human factors taken into the desktop design that minimize the
> keystrokes or mouse-clicks required to do a task, and how that philosophy
> shared by the team created not only the desktop interface itself, but was
> also evident in each of the applications developed as a part of the
> project. KDE3 was the result of that ground-up process, the desktop and all
> of the application that made up the environment benefiting from that
> process in terms of usability and efficiency.
>
>   It is something that can never be captured in a "Let's move to a new
> toolkit and port all the applications over" effort. Every time that has
> been attempted, it invariably results is a "just get it ported and
> working... and let's get a release out" mentality that cannot, and will
> never, achieve the same efficiency or usability that a ground-up design
> did. Thus KDE4 couldn't and Plasma never will match the elegance, the
> integration or the usabilty of the KDE3 desktop environment.
>
>   TDE continues the best of KDE3 -- that's why you are here.

Thank you for the nice, concise summary.

Stefan