KDE Commit-Digest for 26th August 2007

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: "Pencils down" marks the end of the Summer of Code for 2007. Python highlighting support, with work on a new, handwritten lexer in KDevelop. A data engine and associated Plasma applet for KGet. Start of the Plasma-based Wikipedia and Service Info applets for Amarok 2. Wikipedia integration, and other improvements in the Step physics simulation package. A console added to KAlgebra. New graphical themes for KGoldRunner. XMP metadata support in Digikam. More progress in the unobtrusive search dialog for Kate. Usability work across many applications. No mixer functionality in Phonon for KDE 4.0. The start of development on KChart 2.

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Comments

by Patcito (not verified)

so dolphin won't have tabs?
I find splitting a little too geeky for the noobs.

by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds (not verified)

Have you seen average persons browsing the web? Tabs are overkill for them. Want tabs? Use Konqueror. Don't add even more useless features (*) to Dolphin.

(* useless for average people. Geeks can use Konqueror/Krusade.)

by Patcito (not verified)

I usually have more than 2 or 3 directories open. In that case tabs seems better than splitting the screen in 4 parts. So I guess I'll need 3 or 4 instances of dolphin running at the same time, that seems overkill to me. Anyway, I'll probably write the patch myself when I have time.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

No other filebrowser on earth has tabs. Well, OK, some do - but none which are used by normal people ;-)

The idea of split screen is to drag'n'drop between two locations (often offline and online, or a removable device and harddisk). That's something which a normal user now and then has to do. Tabs are only useful if you have to do some serious filemanagement - and how does, besides some geeks like us? So just use Konqueror, as dolphin won't be cluttered with tabs.

Look - I do agree tabs are useful, I will use konqi and not Dolphin just for that. But they are NOT useful for average users, so let's not waste time on them, OK? Dolphin will be embedded in Konqi anyway, so it's not like you loose out.

by blueget (not verified)

USELESS? Its damned not useless! Look: If I am not aware of tabs, or I don't want to use them then I don't use them! But I want to use tabs in Dolphin! And it makes me really angry, that some stupid people only think of stupid users and don't implement a feature that will add a few kbytes to the ~500 mbyte KDE 4!

KDE is not for "average people" as you describe them. "Average poeple" (including you) can use GNOME, that crippled piece of shit, and there they have Nautilus, a bad copy of the Windows explorer, which nearly hasn't got *any* features!

by Wyatt (not verified)

Please, take a pill and knock back a tall cool one. Konqueror is still totally viable, unless I'm missing something crucial here.

Though you definitely have a point- KDE isn't for the "average" user (the average user characteristically using Windows and Explorer, or Ubuntu/fad-distro-of-the-month with Gnome usually), and I highly doubt that that will be changing for the next couple of years.

by Katobatao (not verified)

KDE4 is very much going to be for the average user. You should read up on the developer blogs and the changes being made to KDE apps in terms of design - it's all to accomodate new users - the average user, so to speak. If KDE4 was going to cater to the same, geeky and frankly narrow-minded crowd - they wouldn't be making Dolphin as the default manager (to which people still object, even though Konqueror is still going to be there). It's all a change for the better, if people are so afraid of change (and those too for the better) then they should stick to the current releases.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Tabs seem way geekier. Splitscreen is pretty useful, stuff like mightnight commander and how the windows versions are called are pretty popular - while Konqi is the only filemanager with tabs that I know off...

(for myself, I won't use dolphin anyway, love konqi - but I can see that for average users, tabs are just useless bloat).

by Darkelve (not verified)

My mother, father and sister have been using Firefox for a couple of years now and did not even notice tabs in that period! And even once I explained it, they are not really using them. My brother uses them I think, but he's a civil engineer, and I had to explain it to him once before he started using them.

by Adrian Baugh (not verified)

I find tabs extremely useful for web browsing - it makes flicking between pages very easy - but much less useful for file management, as it's a pain to drag files from one tab to another. In this situation split-pane seems to work best.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Well, I love tabs for filebrowsing, but mom and dad don't even use them for webbrowsing - so indeed, no tabs in a normal filemanager is the way to go. Most of our competition doesn't even have split screen...

by Yortx (not verified)

I think that the tab issue is no problem. Dolphin can be used embedded in konqueror, and then you can use the konqueror tabs to have several instances open in tabs at the same time.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Our users are too stupid to use/understand tabs, so let's remove that choice for them. I'm sure they'll appreciate how we patronize them.

by Patcito (not verified)

I agree. Plus if they don't want to use tabs, then they don't have to. But why punish people that want to use them? If we started removing every single part of kde that noobs won't use or won't understand, we might end up with something that look very much like gnome. Plus dolphin, has support for ssh and ftps (which is great!), but I think there are way more people that would enjoy tabs then enjoy ssh and ftps.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

We have konqueror. Adding options and UI parts just to accommodate the 0.1% powerusers who insist on using dolphin instead of Konqi is just plain stupid.

by Patcito (not verified)

a tab is just a simple qt widget, it doesn't consume any memory when you don't use them and adding them to the code should be a one liner. And I don't think only 0.1% use them. I want to use dolphin because it will have great nepomuk/strigi integration that konqueror probably won't have and I'm sure many power users will do the same.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

The moment you make Dolphin the default and then remove options from users because they are too stupid to understand them, you are in fact stealing plays from Gnome's playbook.

I don't have a problem on the whole with a dedicated file manager being the default file manager. I do have a problem with not being able to configure that file manager to operate how I want it. I consider this a massive step backwards in design philosophy.

In use, it is a minor inconvienence since I can fire up Konqui, however it is the principle that really irks me. I expected more from the KDE team.

by Jucato (not verified)

There's a difference. As Aaron Seigo once said in a comment, Dolphin is for *simple uses* not simple (stupid?) users. Dolphin is meant to be a no-frills, simple, dedicated file manager. Simple enough for basic file management uses, but still powerful by taking advantage of KDE technology. And judging by how some (less vocal, less heard) users have grown to like Dolphin even on the older KDE 3.5.x version, then I'd say it succeeded in its purpose.

As for me... I'll still be sticking to Konqi in KDE 4. My use cases are never simple. :P

by Incd (not verified)

Couldn't you just add the tab support, but let people decide how THEY want to use the software? That way everybody would be happy.

by Stefan (not verified)

I agree. A dedicated file manager is a good idea, I'm sure I would use it if I could and if it was better for my purpose.

Couldn't the developers simply add a configuration point like "Display mode" where you can choose between "Split view (default)" and "Tabs".

About me: I use Konqi for normal working and Yakuake for complex tasks (e.g. the great rename command). I'm using tabs, for copying rather Ctrl-C/V than Drag/Drop.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Why is there no statistic at all in this digest ?

by extropy (not verified)

You should go and read http://commit-digest.org/ if you want statistics.

by extropy (not verified)

I missed your point, the commit-digest.org post has no statistics, not this one.

by kollum (not verified)

well, it's rihgt that http://commit-digest.org/issues/2007-08-26/ doesn't show statistics as usual :
bug killer, buzz, commit country etc ...

There's "only" the sumary, the interview, and the list of commits.

by Danny Allen (not verified)

Fixed now,

Thanks,
Danny

by André (not verified)

I scanned the digest for more info on the removed mixer from Phonon, but I could not find more than what's already in this article. Does anyone know why this step was made? I find a mixer to be a crusial part of the ability to play sound in a desktop system. Is there a place to find some more info on this?

by anonymous coward (not verified)

"No mixer functionality in Phonon for KDE 4.0" doesn't necessarily mean the functionality was there before. Could it be that this was a planned feature that didn't make it in time?

by Jack (not verified)

It might be that whilst phonon cannot mix the music, because it is really (on linux at least) a layer between the application and alsa, sound will still be mixed by alsa.
This would just mean that rather than, say 3 audio streams being sent to phonon, being mixed into one and that is sent to alsa, the 3 that phonon receives are sent separately to asla, where they are mixed.
I'm no expert however, and may be completely wrong.

by Lee (not verified)

Unless I'm misremembering project names, Phonon's whole point is to be an abstraction layer so you can have different underlying player engines, rather than committing to one. Also, the engines are like gstreamer, xine, rather than alsa/oss/etc?

All that said, I don't think this will be a big deal. I'm sure they'll figure something out. I'm more worried about WHY it's not going to be there. Is there some sort of fundamental design problem that needs to be fixed, and will take time? Or is it just more work to implement a phonon mixer than most of us would imagine?

by Dan (not verified)

Well, you see... theres this thing called a code freeze, and it has occured.. When there is only one person working on a given subsystem, as is the case with phonon, there tends not to be enough time to accomplish everything, and therefore some things need to be cut.

by Matt (not verified)

Ouch. So you're saying that there wasn't enough time to complete the mixer before the feature freeze for 4.0, eh? Well, there's always 4.1, right?

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Indeed, and planned just 6 months after 4.0 ;-)

by Ben (not verified)

If you don't have ALSA mixing properly use PulseAudio. Phonon will make it easy to set all you're apps to use Pulse so it dose its job.

by Matthias Kretz (not verified)

let me define what mixer will not be in 4.0:
- There is a hardware mixer in some soundcards (no way to not support it ;-) )
- There's a software mixer provided by dmix (will be supported)
- There's the possibility to create multiple AudioOutput objects in one application, those outputs will use sw/hw mixing on the driver/soundcard
- Last one: create two MediaObjects and connect them to one AudioOutput. That's the functionality that won't make it into 4.0. It's basically impossible to implement using xine anyway.

by liquidat (not verified)

To be honest I don't really get what you mean - can you give me a short use case, a short example of what will be possible and what not?
Will I still be able to Mute my speakers while I have an incoming call on my USB-headset?

by Matthias Kretz (not verified)

It will make no difference for you as a KDE user. It only makes a difference for the developer using the Phonon API.

Yes, you are able to mute your speakers when you have an incoming call on your USB-headset.

by liquidat (not verified)

Perfect, thanks for that explanation.

by André (not verified)

Thanks for your explanation.

by DITC (not verified)

I was wondering if all the new icons will be ready. the last time I saw a screenshot for the control center most of the icons were missing.

by Carsten Niehaus (not verified)

I am not sure if the situation is the same: In Kalzium I had the same issue and Pino simply moved a directory inside Kalziums directories, not the icons appear. That has something to do with the new file/directory naming in KDE4.

by bsander (not verified)

Dolphin will launch KFind for searching, but why not Strigi? Or is Strigi used as a backend for KFind?

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

I think it's not all ready yet, but that'll change.

by Lee (not verified)

Not by default please, unless strigi changes a LOT for KDE 4.

It's not a dig against strigi itself, but for me personally, strigi-like apps will only be useful when they understand RDF and other semantic stuff that's generated in realtime, or when files enter the system. If they're essentially just a modern locate, which build a huge DB in non-realtime, then I'd rather have a normal find-like search dialog.

I know where my important files are. The rest, I use so occasionally that I can wait for a moment to find/grep them. For me, desktop searching will become useful when it creates a paradigm shift, from working with individual apps and documents to working with information and relationships.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Strigi-technologies like deep-grep and deepfind could be used in kfind as well, improving on it in terms of speed and features (the deep* also search in archives etc). And strigi & Nepomuk are working pretty close, so I guess at least some semantic stuff should make it into KDE 4.0 - though the big stuff might be postponed to 4.1

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I thought the semantic desktop was supposed to be a major feature/aspect of KDE 4. Strigi works now, and has for a while, but it won't be included in KDE 4?

That just doesn't make any sense to me.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

yes it will, the digest even speaks of the sidebar in Dolphin using Nepomuk by default... Strigi is already deeply integrated, currently offering the features KDE 3 had (but faster and more thorough), and in the forseeable future, it'll do even more. Don't worry :D

by Sutoka (not verified)

Don't confuse KDE 4.0 with KDE 4.

by Andreas (not verified)

the "semantic desktop" is,first of all, buzz word ;)

by anonymous coward (not verified)

Is KChart's output going to be a flake?

P.S: Am I the only one thinking that the "Title"-field is superfluous?

by Inge Wallin (not verified)

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: KChart 2 will provide both a Flake shape, a KPart for embedding in e.g. Konqueror or Dolphin and a stand-alone application.