In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Much work in Amarok, with the implementation of a CoverFlow-esque OpenGL album art visualisation, codenamed "CoverBling", and Service Framework and Plasmification efforts. Sample OpenGL-based applets added to Plasma,, with Plasmoids to watch for changes to files, for browsing files, and to monitor network interfaces. General progress in the 2d projection and KML in Marble, OpenPrinting, and KOrganizer Theming Summer of Code projects. KWallet support in KRDC. KMines essentially rewritten with a QGraphicsView base, with support for multiple background SVG themes in KGoldRunner. More manipulation and view work in Kreative3d. Implementation of Kubelka-Munk paint mixing research in Krita. Internet integration in Kaider, with a WebQuery view and example script to use Google Translate. okular becomes usable as a print preview component. KTrace, a "strace" interface for KDE 4 added to playground/sysadmin. Beginnings of support for ComunIP, a Brazilian IM protocol in Kopete. More progress in the porting of Digikam and KTorrent to KDE 4. The start of a rewrite of the Oxygen widget style. KBFX, an alternate K menu, moves to kdereview.
Comments
Ok, thanks for the answer.
See you.
What happens when you drag a KGeography map into Marble? Or stack the 50% transparent plasmoid of one atop the other?
:-) 8-/ <3 !
> What happens when you drag a KGeography map into Marble
Nothing happens so far. We think about unifying those apps for KDE 4.1 though.
I just donated like 15 GBP as a thanks for the KDE Commit-Digest.
I don't know how much a GBP is, but I hope it's not equal to a
thousand dollars. But hopefully it'll help them keep coming!
Thanks for the donation Henry!
A nice and much appreciated surprise for me to wake up to today ;)
Thanks again,
Danny
I thought plasma was basically Kdesktop, Kicker and SuperKramba combined, how come its possible to include it in applications?
What I understand of it:
- Plasma has a basic library (libplasma) for the infrastructure of data sources, engines, etc.. Other applications use that for their canvas.
- The plasma desktop application uses X11. So that will not be portable. The library however is.
Diederik has it right. essentially to bring together all those other apps into plasma we needed to write a whole bunch of support code. no surprise there, of course.
while writing this support framework (libplasma) i tried to ensure that the design was kept fairly straightforward and generalized. now it turns out that that code is also pretty useful to a lot of other people who are trying to do for their apps what plasma is trying to do for the desktop (make it look prettier and work better). more people than i actually expected, to be honest.
looks like kdm might even end up using it.
kdm may be using it?? what does this exactely mean? will there the possibility to use widgets there if they base some parts on libplasma????
that's the idea.
woo! clock plasmoids everywhere! :)
I don't know how Oxygen widget set looks like, but I hope, that "clean GUI" ideas such as: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/KDE+4.x+Dark+Liquid?content=62269 will be implemended. No edges, no gui noise, no extra borders between widgets! That sort of mockups looks great! Examples:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=34997
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=28476
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Dolphin+mockup%21?content=56040
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/KDE4+Simple+Style?content=55317
Almost all of this mockups has highest rating meaning that many people think the same.
Good luck!
I've always loved Adrien Facélina/Erioll's mockups. The "FileFinder" mockup
is freaking amazing, as is the rest of his mockups. I really love
the contrasting colors in the widgets. I don't know if he is already
discussing with the Oxygen team, but I wish he would.
I second that... eriol's are the best mockups hands down.
Note that they don't even need something like transparancy to look fresh, cool and modern... and at the same moment mature, calm and clean - that's what i call great great design. And it doesn't really resemble any other OS or Desktop.
I really do hope that the oxygen guys read these comments and those on kde-look.org. It would be sad if the awesome work under the hood of KDE4 wouldn't be reflected in some extraordinary design of the gui - an simply transparent, rounded-edged stuff isn't extraordinary anymore for sure.
So please, people, look at eriol's designs!
Maybe it's better to post this discussion to kde-artists mailing list (https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-artists) or in the other list where Oxygen developing are discussing.
What is the problem with borders? They help navigation.
Except when there's too many of them - borders are fine... when there's a good, solid reason for them being there :)
Too bad that the KDE people remove all borders and dividers all together...
No more than a 1 pixel border is needed.
i really hope that some of this mockups get included.. especially the filefinder (property button in the sidebar --> very good) and the thing with the contacts look really cool and useable (maybe not from the left border but a widget providing this functionality would be really cool... wish i could do it for myself ... don't know how.. are there any tutorials on how to write plasmoids? hope i don't need skills with kde4 development (have just begun learning) but i've got pretty good c++, qt, c# skills.. hope they'll do it ^^
two things i really would like to see in kde4:
1) more consistent behaviour inbetween applications, especially concerning hotkeys. e.g. if shift-right switches to the next tab in konsole and yakuake, then why doesnt it do that in konqueror and kopete? also ctrl-m hides the menubar in konqueror and kmplayer, but doing that isnt even possible in kmail and juk...
could these things not be controlled by underlying kde-infrastructure so that they work the same with all kde-apps?
2) better and centralized privacy options, e.g. the possibility to disable the use of "histories" and "recent files" throughout all kde-apps. also it would be nice if each app would provide "clear recent files list"-action, this could be the last element of the "recent files menu"
what do you think? it shouldnt be too hard from a technical pov, or am i mistaken?
thanks!
I can't argue with either of those ideas.
I agree.
3)Consistent MDI/tabbing and sidebar system in applications. Konqueror, Konsole, Kate, Kile, Quanta, KDevelop, KOffice all handle more than one documents/tabs at the same time and all handle them differently. Kate, Kile, KDevelop, Konqueror, KOffice all have sidebars/tool windows but all handle them slightly differently.
> e.g. if shift-right switches to the next tab in konsole and yakuake,
> then why doesnt it do that in konqueror and kopete?
Please bear in mind that Konsole and Yakuake (which is built on top of the embedded Konsole) do have certain restrictions placed on them about which key combinations they can and cannot use as shortcuts in order to remain compatible with various terminal programs.
For example, there are no Ctrl+[Character] or F[Number] shortcuts in Konsole by default because terminal programs (such as Vim) use them.
I think the 'correct' tab switching shortcut is Ctrl+PageUp , Ctrl+PageDown as defined in kdelibs. I will probably relax the 'no Ctrl+[Character] shortcuts by default' restriction in Konsole for that particular shortcut because I couldn't find any important terminal applications using it by default.
> could these things not be controlled by underlying kde-infrastructure
> so that they work the same with all kde-apps?
Many of the them are. What KDE currently provides for many actions is the menu/toolbar item consisting of translated text, icon, shortcut and position in the menus, but not the actual code which gets executed when you click on said item because that depends on the application.
The show, hide menu bar item is one of those. KDE defines the how the menu item behaves, what it looks like and where it appears. The few lines needed to add it to an application and do the right thing are currently done at the application level.
In regards to all the menu discussions here:
Please remember that the menu is a very important first impression item when a new user tries a system.
It is of course very important that the menu is technically good, but it is also very important that if "feels" good for newcommers.
KDE4 is in many ways a fresh start for KDE and will attract users from all sorts of environments. It is important that they feel comfortable and get a good first impression.
A shure way do push users away is to have a menu that is "experts only" or looks like it is made for engineers only.
My personal expereince is that menus like Kickoff (have not tested the other newcommers) are more attractive to newcommers/newbees than the standard Kmenu. There are several aspects of the Kickoff menu that I do not like and I often end up using the search to get to the app I need. But for new users that are not in to KDE, it seems to be a good match.
Birger
Well, to add my 5 cents, I have been using the 'traditional' KDE menu for nearly 5 years, and I like the Kicker menu (as implemented in OpenSuse 10.2) much better; for me it is cleaner (less items in each list and/or more relevant items), I can organize things better (Favorites) and find things quicker. The only thing I do not like is the slight delay when you hover from a tab (big tabs at the bottom) to another tab, should be instantaneous IMO.
It is actually Kick-Off that you are using.
Yes, that's what I meant.
I get confused with all the names (KickOff, Kicker, KBFX, ...)
1. The delay is configurable, IIRC.
2. Its purpose is to let people quickly throw their mouse to different parts of the screen with no fear of accidentally switching tabs.
Kickoff is not surely better for newbies. Standard K menu works just like a menu in a KDE application, which is mostly like a menu in other GUIs. In contrast, Kickoff is very different from other menus so the user have to get used to a new, unusual thing. Furthermore, a more interested user who is new to Linux and KDE wants to explore the new system and find out what kind of applications are installed. This is exactly what is uncomfortable with Kickoff.
Yet Vista's new menu is closer to Kickoff than Window's old Start Menu.
Why is this important now?
Because you said new users can't get used to a new menu. Oddly enough that didn't stop Microsoft from greatly changing their menu with Vista.
I don't think that should ever be a reason to hold back a good program, to suggest that users can't possibly learn something new.
That sounds a little too close to Gnome philosophy for me.
I don't think we should stay at old programs to make it easyer to learn. I'm just not sure that Kickoff is better for beginners than the original K menu as Birger wrote.
> I often end up using the search to get to the app I need
You're saying it like it's a bad thing :^)
I've actually just left linux and gone back to windows, solely because right now I don't see KDE as being that interesting. Kopete is lacking, Kmail is substandard. Really the only decent and exciting apps with kde are amarok and k3b. Also having a dial up connection mostly updating KDE weekly is a nightmare. I don't see how many windows people are going to use kde4 with the size of the updates. Will be keeping an eye out for KDE4, and prolly come back to linux to try that, and hope that kmail and kopete teams start improving their products.
That's a strange motivation for switching back to windows because windos have improved even less in the recent years. (And keep in mind that the KDE team has been focusing on KDE 4 of late.) Or do you mean the amazing vista eyecandy?
If it is merely Vista eye-candy, you can make KDE look pretty close to Vista as it is, and there is a near-perfect Vista Transformation Pack for XP.
Honestly, I can't think of a single good reason to actually run Vista, and I can think of plenty of reasons not to.
It was irony.