[KDE Dot News]
 faq
 flatforty
 contribute
 subscribe
 configure
 search
 rdf
 main


  KDE Commit-Digest for 18th November 2007
Developer Posted by Danny Allen on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @19:47
from the thanksgiving dept.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Calculator and Show Desktop Plasmoid, units conversion and contacts "runners", enhanced composite-based effects, a "dashboard" view and applet hover handles in Plasma. Updated artwork for "about" pages (like the one present in Konqueror upon application startup). Support for quick user switching in Kickoff. Continued development progress in KDevelop 4. Work begins on resurrecting KEduca for the KDE 4.1 timeframe. New imagery for KTuberling and KMahjongg. Foundations laid for "undo close tab" in Konqueror. OSS device hotplugging in KMix. A bandwidth scheduler plugin in KTorrent. Interface work, including per-protocol UI specification in Kopete. Hardware database for an enhanced audio device experience in Phonon. Continued KDE 4 porting in K3b, with the integration of Solid and Phonon for device and media management. KDE 3.96 tagged, comprising Release Candidate 2 of the development platform (hopefully final), and Beta 5 (or Release Candidate 1) of the Desktop.


<  |  >

 
  Related Links
 ·   Articles on Developer
 ·   Also by Danny Allen
 ·   Contact author

Thread Threshold:

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )

Over 40 comments listed. Printing out index only.
Comit diggest!
by Carutsu on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @20:17
Yay finally Commit Diggest time!
[ Reply To This | View ]
KDEmod
by T. J. Brumfield on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @20:31
On Arch Linux, I've been using KDEmod, which I love. I used those patches on Sabayon and Gentoo as well. Will any of these improvements ever find there way to KDE 4?
[ Reply To This | View ]
Now it all makes sense,
by Skeith on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @20:33
That explanation of Containment sure cleared a few things up on just how Plasma works. Now that 4.0 looms the development pace seems to be getting faster every day, hats off to the KDE devs.

Commit-Digests never disappoint, thanks for all the hard work putting these together.
[ Reply To This | View ]
errors in commit-digest.org
by david on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @21:36
the errors:



Warning: file(): Unable to access /var/network/www/docs/commit-digest.org/issues/2007-11-18/introduction.txt in /var/network/www0/docs/commit-digest.org/content.inc on line 101

Warning: file(/var/network/www/docs/commit-digest.org/issues/2007-11-18/introduction.txt): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/network/www0/docs/commit-digest.org/content.inc on line 101

Warning: array_search(): Wrong datatype for second argument in /var/network/www0/docs/commit-digest.org/content.inc on line 118

Warning: array_search(): Wrong datatype for second argument in /var/network/www0/docs/commit-digest.org/content.inc on line 177
[ Reply To This | View ]
Marketing guys really forked over the big cash
by T. J. Brumfield on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @22:31
I think it was worth it, though it was probably pretty expensive to hire Tom Green to do the Plasma screen-cast.
[ Reply To This | View ]
Good stuff
by Leo S on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @22:35
Thanks for the digest Danny!

The plasma video is pretty cool, lots of effects I'm looking forward to..

My only wish is that someone would make that volume on-screen display pretty (end of the video). It's still just as terribly ugly as in KDE3 and really no longer fits.

The rest looks top notch. :)
[ Reply To This | View ]
New "about" pages
by Anonymous on Wednesday 21/Nov/2007, @23:36
They are really good and oxygenish. But IMHO the black plasmoid-like rectangle in the center looks too contrast and unnatural in otherwise low-contrast konqueror window. It attracts all attention from other important parts of the window. Probably the same plasmoid-like border but light-grey background will be better ?

Thanks a lot for all you hard-work which made KDE4 possible !
[ Reply To This | View ]
App launchers in container
by dooberry on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @02:37
One thing I was wondering from the screencast is how easy it'd be to set up application launchers in the container. So instead of having a quick-launch bar, you just bring the container to the front and have a grid of your selected applications to choose from, in nice big icons.
[ Reply To This | View ]
Why so many "borders" (at least in Dolphin)?
by kde.fan.from.brasil on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @03:34
Why there are so many borders is the every Dolphin panel? It's a (Oxygen) style problem or a application one?

Look at the screenshots, the places panel have a border around it, the name 'places' (and the buttons) are almost over this line. And appears to me that every panel have it's border, and vertical and horizontal "splitters". The information panel (2nd screenshot) it's pretty overcrowded, so full of stuff that it's difficult to find the information that you need.

http://img164.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=30400_7_122_1144lo.jpg
http://img192.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=30406_sreencast_122_505lo.jpg

Please remove all that borders you can. Sorry to say that, but in this shape Dolphin looks a lot like a KDE 3 application running a modded Plastik theme.

Another problem is the green progress bar. It's pretty strange, too big, with a weird proportion. I suggest that you create a small contour around it and make it a little smaller (in the vertical).

Thanks and sorry for my bad english.
[ Reply To This | View ]
Much Loved Features - Not There Yet, or Dropped?
by Anon on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @04:09
Here's a couple of KDE3 features that I (and many other people) really love, but which are not yet available for 4.0. It would be nice to know whether they simply haven't been ported yet, or whether they have been purposefully dropped, for usability or other reasons. This is an important distinction as I know that I can write a patch for the former and have it accepted, but if for the latter I know I'd be wasting my time[1].

1) Thumbnailing in File Dialogues. Note that I'm *not* talking about the individual file preview that can be summoned by pressing F11, but the "icon view" that thumbnails *all* files in the current directory (even over remote kio_slaves like ftp!) so you can see previews of all of them at once without having to hover over each one individually.

I remember my 58-year-old mum went bananas over this when she saw me attach an image in KMail - she'd been using Thunderbird whose GTK file dialogue does not have this feature, and finding the right image she wanted to attach out of her hundreds was really laborious. But with KMail, she could see all the previews at once in the file dialogue itself and just scroll through, finding the one she wanted almost straight away. It's a fantastic usability enhancement for power-users and newbies alike, and is often trumpeted as being one of the top reasons why KDE's file dialogues are so much better than GNOME/GTKs. Hopefully it just hasn't been ported yet - the idea of such a great labour-saving feature being dropped just for some "less is more" aesthetic makes me queasy :/

2) Thumbnail + info when you hover over a file in Konqueror. This is a great feature because you do not need a separate panel taking up space all the time - just hover over the file you want information/ thumbnail of, and up it pops! Dolphin does not have this feature, relying on the aforementioned panel to display the info, which is one of the reasons why I'll be using Konqueror in KDE4 (no disrespect to Peter and Dolphin - having Dolphin as the default file manager was the Right Choice as far as I'm concerned, as long as Konqueror remained as feature rich as it is now).

Unfortunately, KDE4's Konqueror now embeds Dolphin, so we lose this handy and space-efficient feature. Any chance of having it return if, say, the File Information panel isn't currently enabled by the user?

3) File Size View in Konqueror. That awesome little plug-in that shows you what's taking up all the space in your current directory and subdirectories by showing all files as blocks geometrical physical size reflects their on-disk size.


--

Incidentally, maybe it would be worth setting up a "Things That Didn't Make it (But Will)" page on techbase or the like, detailing all the features that are planned but didn't make it for 4.0 - things like ereslibres excellent progress viewer, for example. Whenever a feature goes astray, there's often a huge outcry on the Dot about "teh GNOME-ification!1" of KDE/ threats to leave KDE or, if it was a feature that was hyped a while back (as was Raphael's progress viewer, in the Road to KDE4) people will scream "KDE4 is all hype!1", etc. While such tantrums can usually be ignored, it's nice to avoid them in the first place, and a page such as this would go a long way towards accomplishing this and quelling whiner's complaints or just putting dedicated fan's (like me!) fears to rest. What do people think of this idea? Does anyone who has used a recent KDE4 have any items they would add to my list?

[1] There's nothing more demoralizing than this. I remember when someone (not me!) actually spent time on and submitted a patch to add the oft-requested tabs to Dolphin, only to have it rejected. Peter was very nice about the whole thing and was very apologetic and clearly conflicted, but it would have been better, I think, to have a clearly publicised statement saying "We know this feature is really desired by end-users, but we have no plans to include it for the following reasons:"
[ Reply To This | View ]
Lost
by Danilo Luvizotto on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @05:48
I've been trying to use kde 4 RC1 these days. But I miss a guide or manual that tells me what I should test, what should be working. Because there are lots of things that are obviously not working. So, should I post a bug because of something that simply isn't ready? Kopete, for example, doesn't store all options of it's settings and some they aren't applied. The plasma replacement of kicker is also missing usability: I don't know how to add or remove plasmoids in it.
[ Reply To This | View ]
about containers and the video
by tikal26 on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @07:00
SO the screencast looks fantastic, but I am not sure how the containers work yet. I am wondering if there are plans for the user to be able to zoom in and out using the keyboard. I am not sure the best way is to click on the toolbox.I have to say kde4 it looking better and better everyday.
[ Reply To This | View ]
Plasma
by Miha Simonic on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @08:34
Can't wait to final! It is do good and ...


But I have some questions in relationship with plasma?
- what about support for icons on desktop
- what about compatibly .desktop files both for KDE3 and 4
- links that i have made in KDE3 don't work in KDE4
- what about configuring wallpaper? I still can't configure it. It would nice to see options from KDE3 conf dialog - gradients, etc.
- what about superkaramba support for plasma? And, for example I write plasmoid, how can I run it - or better how can I add it too dialog and new ...
- also what about apple dashboard support
- panel is not configurable

I think that KDE have to be higly costumable as KDE3 is - maybe idea for 4.1 - old kcontrol from 3.5 for example - not kubuntu systemsettings!!!.

I know that there are many more important things but please include walpaper option.
[ Reply To This | View ]
Kwin Composite
by Luis on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @12:54
Finally I got Kwin Composite working whit ati, aiglx and the new driver.

And, I liked a lot some of the effects, as the parent dialog, however, it's a lot slower than Compiz Fusion, and it doesn't appear to offer all the effects.

It felt like using xcompmgr. Is it really using 3D accel? or is it just using 2D accel?

Thanks, and cheers.
[ Reply To This | View ]
The launcher button is not in the corner anymore
by Antoine Chavasse on Thursday 22/Nov/2007, @14:30
The new panel look is awesome. However, there is a slight usability problem with it: the launcher button is not in the corner anymore and is therefore not as easy to hit.

Maybe some special rule could be devised where when you click on the side borders of the panel, the clicks would register as clicks on the leftmost/rightmost contained plasmoid.
[ Reply To This | View ]

 
The Fine Print: The previous comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )
  "Time for a make-it-cool branch?" -- Simon Hausmann
KDE®, "K Desktop Environment", "KDE Dot News", "got the dot?" and the KDE Logo® are trademarks or registered trademarks of KDE e.V. in the European Union, the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the poster. The rest: Copyright © 2000-2008 KDE e.V. for The KDE Project. For further information or comments on this site, please contact the Webmaster.
[ home | post article | flat forty | subscribe | search | rdf ]