KDE-CVS-Digest for May 23, 2003

Menu usability gets improved. KDE Print gets printer capability access and quite a few bug fixes.
Kate now has command line access to variables, similar to Vim commands or Emacs local variables. Plus numerous fixes
to keyboard handling, KSpread and Konqueror. All this and more in the latest KDE-CVS-Digest.

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Comments

Okay, I reported all teh bugs like you all have been telling me. I am very very impressed with the KDE developers, they have commented and asked for more details, and given me suggestions or their experiences with it in less than 5 minutes for all the bugs I submitted and a few times less tahna full two minutes. In addition, 4 of my bugs were marked invalid or duplicates and so now there are only 9 bugs that are valid of which only 3 are real bugs, and the rest wishes.

KDe devs I expected you were very fast and committed, but WOW =) The votes thingy is also vey kewl =) So is the nice statistics you can see and the "my Bugs" buttona s well as "Show Comments" button. Oh the wole bug thing is great, and Kbugbuster front end is very coool too.

> UGLY seelction and text in comparrison to Finder, nautilus, Explorer and almost every file manager.

Konq's selection and text are very comparable to Windows2000's explorer. Not really ugly at all. It'd be nice to have other modes, but nobody is really screaming to get rid of what we have.

by Alex (not verified)

So please compare that to the soon to come longhorn or to Windows XP which was released in 2001 and has yet to be surpassed by linux.

Stop comparing old versions of windows to the latest and greatest in KDE.

by fault (not verified)

> So please compare that to the soon to come longhorn or to Windows XP which was released in 2001 and has yet to be surpassed by linux.

1. Longhorn will come out in 2005. Hardly "soon to be released".
2. Linux is ahead of windows in other things, and KDE is not Linux nor Windows.
3. A whole shitload of people prefer win2k to XP, and even in XP, they use the builtin-"Windows Classic" visual style, which uses win2000's selection style. Some versions of XP even default to this, especially the very pricey ones (Advanced Server, and DataCenter, among others...)
4. It doesn't take the two-three year gap between 2000 and XP to develop such a feature as XP's selection style... Nobody has yet implemented this in KDE because no developer, as of yet, really cares enough to do it.

by Alex (not verified)

Longhorn may come in late 2004. Well, even more people use the standard XP theme. Besides GNOME has it =p

by Datschge (not verified)

Gnome or just Nautilus?

by Zoltan Bartko (not verified)

I see I can send faxes with KDE Print. What do I *receive* faxes with? Is there any fax program frontend in KDE that could help me receive faxes? I am way too lazy to use the command line and stubborn enough not to use efax-gtk.

Thanks for your advice.

Zoltan

by Datschge (not verified)

How about KVoice? http://apps.kde.com/na/2/info/id/590 KSendFax? http://apps.kde.com/na/2/info/id/194

Generic advice: do a search on apps.kde.com for finding KDE apps. ;)

by Zoltan Bartko (not verified)

Dear Datschge,

I must tell you I had a look at apps.kde.com, even freshmeat.net and I have not found anything significant.

KVoice is way too old (who uses kde 1 these days?) and the ksendfax documentation says nothing about receiving faxes.

Anyway, thank you for your help.

Best regards

Zoltan

by Datschge (not verified)

Hi Zoltan,

you are right. Seems like except for special cases like KMLOFax and HamFax there's not enough demand (or not enough motivation for the developer) to keep fax receiving applications up to date (didn't even notice that klprfax and efax got removed from kdeutils in CVS). Oh well...

by Apollo Creed (not verified)

This looks like an example of a situation where cooperation between the desktop environments instead of competition would actually be beneficial. A certain app exists for Gnome, but not KDE, and demand obviously isn't high enough for a KDE app to be created / maintained.

So I guess competition doesnt _always_ lead to better products...

by Datschge (not verified)

Cooperation between KDE and Gnome already exist. Competition only exists in the eye of the beholders, many developers and users simply don't care about "KDE versus Gnome" stories, they are mostly by outsiders.

That being said: how do you think a better cooperation between KDE and Gnome could lead to a fax application for KDE? In any case you need a developer interested in either picking up an outdated KDE app, porting a Gnome app written in a different language for a different toolkit or writing a new fax app from scratch.

by Apollo Creed (not verified)

I see your point, I wasn't exactly clear, sorry.

Here's what I wanted to say: Sometimes, there are arguments about whether it'd be better for the "Linux Desktop" if there was only one leading, popular desktop environment instead of two. Some people think it'd be better if one DE ruled the Linux desktop; others think competition between two (or more) DE's lead to better DE's overall.

(I tend to agree with the former standpoint; if there was only one DE, commercial companies would know which modern DE to target for Linux apps instead of resorting to Motif apps, and we wouldn't be using feature-complete but insanely ugly AcobatReaders. ;))

by Manfred Tremmel (not verified)

I'm receiving faxes with KMail. Every in hylafax incoming fax is converted to PDF and sent to my inbox. I don't need a fax-receifing Software.

by Datschge (not verified)

Thanks for telling us about this, now after some googling I'll happily refer people to http://www.hylafax.org/howto/delivery.html#ss4.2 in the future. =)

by tril (not verified)

I've been using CVS for a few months now, and so far, the experience has been great. There are a lot of improvements over KDE 3.1. However, personally, before KDE 3.2, I'd like to see the following things. /me hopes that these get done:

1. konqueror ported to the new tab code, with features of tab moving, tab drag and drop, tab detaching, and at least possible features of close button on each tab (versus close button in right side), tab highlighting (on new data), tabs on left and side (rotated!)...
2. I'd also like konsole to be ported to the new tab code... big inconsistancy to have so many different tab codes!
3. kwallet made, stablized, and finished..
4. faster selection in khtml-- perhaps gecko's is faster because it only uses one color instead of inverting colors in khttml. Also, being able to select Images in Gecko is very nice!
5. hope that the WYSIWYG mode in quanta gets stablized! (doesn't have to be feature complete)
6. a kdevelop-gideon beta1 at the same time as KDE 3.2 announce? That would be sweet! (and perhaps a gideon final with KDE 3.3.3 :))
7. a new koffice version with 3.2. It's gotten a LOT faster recently, especially kspread.

by Nicolas Deschildre (not verified)

"5. hope that the WYSIWYG mode in quanta gets stablized! (doesn't have to be feature complete)"
I think the basic VPL (Visual Page Layout, i prefer this instead of WYSIWYG :-) mode i.e. delayed synchonization between the Quanta editor and the kafka view should be done for 3.2, on condition that i get some more free time! I'm currently working alone on kafka, and this is a huge work(for me :-)

by teatime (not verified)

Unless something goes madly wrong, a first Gideon (KDevelop-3) beta will definitely be out this year. The as yet unspoken intention is to go final with KDE-3.2.

More users (== testers) will certainly help. :)

by Anon (not verified)

and thanks for this wonderful gift, Derek!

by Alex (not verified)

I have seen lots of progress from KDE since January when 3.1 was released and I am wondering, when will an aplha of KDE 3.2 be released. yes, I know that the labels probably don't matter, its just a mental thing for me, and more distros package KDE when some kind of label is put on it. It's been a long time and I really want to know why there's no alpha.

e expect nothing but the best work from DKe developers and I know they do too and want to take their time, but is tehre a problem or why is there no alpha? thanks in advance.

by lit (not verified)

Releasing a Alpha in terms of KDE development historically implies a feature plan freeze (so that there is plenty of time for stablization) I don't think anyone wants that right now, as this time seems to be the phase in KDE development that features get thought of, started, and developed.

i beleive alpha1 will come out somewhat between now and the annual KDE developer's conference in august (in Nove Hrady, Czech Republic this year)

by Tabber (not verified)

The transparency feature works like a charm except for the fact that taskbar buttons are not translucent. Is this possible to add w/o recoding a lot?

by Zack Rusin (not verified)

No, it's not. I had some complains about it and if I'll have enough time I'll work on it.

by Uresu (not verified)

Any developments on this, cos I think its a major gap :/

by Antiphon (not verified)

Aaron recently cleaned up some of the menus in Konqueror but IMHO they're still too cluttered. Also the image context menu hasn't been cleaned up yet. It should be much smaller than the page menu since there are fewer things one can do with it.

Please vote for Bug 53772 at http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53772

Here's my proposed image context menu:

View Image
Copy to Clipboard
Copy Image Location
-----
Save Image
Send Image
-----
Stop Animations
Image Properties
-----
(Linked image menu)
-----
Open Link in New Window
Open Link in New Tab
Open LInk in Background Tab

by Datschge (not verified)

(I guess we need a global message board at bugs.kde.org where people can promote their reports...)

by Anonymous (not verified)

No. Why promotion (lengthy duplicate postings?) instead of arguments/comments and voting?

by Datschge (not verified)

Don't ask me, ask those who post messages promoting specific wish & bug reports at places like dotty where they are off topic most of the time but reach a larger audience. Your answer is not convincing any user to stop promoting "their" reports here, while having a board for such posts whould at least allow us to refer them to there while deleting them here as off topic.

by AC (not verified)

But they only post them here because here is an audience... an audience that is probably getting smaller and smaller with each off-topic posting though...

by Datschge (not verified)

That's why I suggest having a separate board to which we can refer them while moving the off topic but b.k.o related stuff to there. It's not like off topic posts here don't get any valuable response, so such a separate board wouldn't be born dead but could ensure that article boards stay on topic.

Navindra, what do you think?

by Antiphon (not verified)

I don't see how my post was ot since one of the things mentioned in Derek's article was the fact that the Konqueror menus have been revised. This has long been one of the nagging bugs in KDE UI. However, this work hasn't been completed.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

there will likely be more work done on konqi's menus for 3.2... if you really want to be helpful, here's what you could do: start keeping track of every menu entry you select, and preferably the order you select them in, while doing normal work/browsing/file management. start a file and enter each menu item select, one per line, something like "Context / Open In New Window" or "Location / New Window"... do this for a week or two and then post the file somewhere we can get to it for analysis. i suppose we could also instrument the code base to generate the files more or less automagically and distribute patches ... i'd just hate to invest time in that only for it to go unused (especially by the people for whom the data would be the most meaningful: average users) ... yes, doing it manually would be a lot of work, but just think how much work many of the coders put into making KDE better =)

by zank (not verified)

Great work, although it's a bit disappointing to see the features column filled and the optimize column completely empty :(. I'm not saying KDE is very slow but it can always be improved.

by Derek Kite (not verified)

Premature optimization is the root of all evil. One cannot optimize without being reasonably feature complete.

The optimization required may be in my grey matter. Or maybe that would be a feature?

Essentially, if the commit comment refers to a speed increase, it gets chosen for optimization (most of the time). So I'm sure I miss alot of optimizations that are side effects of code cleanups, more correct code, or even a change with a precise description without reference to it's speed improvement.

I'm sure this is the case. I noticed cvs konqueror being a bit slow a few weeks ago, then it sped up again. I recompile about twice a week. Some change made the difference, fixing a bug, that I didn't flag as an optimization, or maybe didn't notice at all.

The focus right now seems to be finishing up the features needed for 3.2, and bug fixing.

Derek

by yg (not verified)
by Datschge (not verified)

Ask your friends to vote for them then.

by Datschge (not verified)

Uh, first let someone reopen them or look for similar reports which are still open, those two bugs got closed even before bugzilla was used there...

by yg (not verified)

how can I reopen a bug-report?

by Datschge (not verified)

You can't. Enter a well written new report pointing out the problem and suggesting all possible and ideal solutions if you think it's worth the trouble.

by Hoernerfranz (not verified)

oh, well,
kspread from cvs now has a new startup - the handy feature
'start with previously used document' including MRU list has gone !
there is not even the choice of staring with an empty document...
I wonder who has decided do make such 'improvements'...

by Philipp (not verified)

It's not only KSpread, this affects all KOffice apps.

BUT: This new dialog just appeared and it will be adjusted. Just follow the thread on the respective mailingslist (koffice-devel).

Would be a nice addition, if you start to discuss there and not here.

Philipp

by not_regisitered (not verified)

using a mouse over on tab icons to reveal a close button seems more of an evil hack than something good. either you add permanent close buttons to each tab or make the user use the middle mouse button maybe (it reloads the last link gone to currently ;/) or just right click than select close tab. maybe add mouse wheel support to cycle through the tabs (any kind of tabs, even different konsole sessions).

meh, so far kde is nice so im not complaining that much at all.