28
Nov
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Trash applet, various general improvements, and support for sharing configuration layouts in Plasma. "Undo close tab" feature in Konqueror. Development continues towards Amarok 2.0, with services becoming plugins and support for the Amapche music server. Continued progress in KDevelop and KEduca. More work on album display and improved thumbnails (with RAW format support) in Digikam. A BitTorrent plugin for KGet, based on the recently created libktorrent. Directory monitoring-and-update support in NEPOMUK. Work returns to Okteta, a hex editing utility. "Connection Status" plugin removed from Kopete. Kile begins to be ported to KDE 4, whilst work begins on KGPG2. Goya, a GUI widget framework, is imported into playground.
Comments
KDE4 really nice
we wait for the big day :)
Happy Birthday KDE e.V.!
(27th November) is the day on which the KDE e.V. was founded, ten years ago.
Video previews
> fix the layout of the preview widget. Have fun watching videos
> in the file dialog :-)
Neat, it works very nicely. Thanks for that Matthias :)
Re: Video previews
Can also this video preview be enabled in the Dolphin's preview panel?
Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
I think this is the first commit digest in a long time that contained no item that made me go 'wow!'. I suppose that's a sign that we're nearing release time, which is a very good thing.
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
I'll try harder for next week? ;)
Danny
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
You're the man Danny. Thanks for all the work you put into the digest.
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
The summary didn't mention any one huge feature that jumped out at me, but the "Contents" section lists that 9 of the categories had new features. And the Digest only represents a portion of all commits. Honestly, I'm shocked that so many "new" features are being included this late in the game, well after feature freeze.
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
RTFA! You should take a closer look.
Features in Development Tools -> playground and KDevelop
Features in Educational -> playground
Features in Games -> playground
Features in Graphics -> extragear and work branch
Features in Office -> koffice
Features in Multimedia -> extragear and work branch
Features in Utilities -> playground and work branch
So only 2 of the categories had new features after the feature freeze. And those very either small features (almost bugfixes like hiding the menubar) or plasma and kopete.
Stop spreading FUD!
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
Er.. that wasn't FUD.
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
well, the person probably didn't do it on purpose, but I agree with cloose it DOES classify as fear/uncertainty/doubt spreading, eg FUD...
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
How is it spreading fear to say that developers are still working on new features?
One person posted initially in a negative light about the lack of "wow" features, and I was trying to spin it in a positive light, and I was attacked for it.
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
It's the way you say it, implying that people break the feature freeze to add new features. This is clearly not the case, but you crate uncertainty that the freeze is not respected and that the release will contain new and unstable code added up until the last minute.
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
> It's the way you say it
Or maybe people just feel offended too easily. Textual conversation differs a lot to face2face communication. It's a pity people get too fast and too much heated about nothing, as if they were toxiomanics you took away their drugs.
Re: Nothing That Made Me Go Wow -- Good!
Seriously. This isn't FUD. It's some guy making himself look like an idiot by posting without reading the article. Crying FUD at every little tidbit of misinformation is hardly needed. Just correct the guy and tell him to read the article next time.
Enough of plasma applets
Is it really neccessary to have feature stories about every silly plasma applet that gets added? Its fairly clear what plasma is going to be in 4.0, I don't think that stories are all that important. It would be nice to see a focus each week on a different module that will be released in 4.0 as we get closer to the release, maybe written by the release coordinator for that module, with the focus being on what to expect in kde4.0, what not to expect in kde4.0, and what might be coming later.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
I agree with you. Too much info about Plasma, and no info about another components.
Anyway, I enjoy reading this. Kudos to Danny and all other people involved.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
Until last week, I hadn't covered Plasma for quite a while. Having a small section on Plasma this week, I hardly think that's overkill (especially when news on Plasma seems to be pretty much always "popular").
Regarding module overviews before KDE 4.0 is released, I plan to do that, and the next weeks should see these sections.
Danny
Re: Enough of plasma applets
I like to see what is going on plasma, but I have to agre that it seems that right now the only thing going on is about applets. I would like to know what else is going on like the panel and the other menus(Lancelot, Raptor). I also rember something about the little icons on the 4 corners of an icons so that I could play it or do more actions (anyone knows what happened to that?)I think they were called quick actions or ¨plasma Icons¨. I think that fromt he beginning plasma was supposed to be about more that applets so it would be nice to know if there is anything else going on with that.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
You are right, of course, but maybe we should not expect every idea implemented and detail finished and polished for 4.0. I'll just settle for a usable and fairly stable 4.0.0. Everything else is a bonus IMHO.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
yeah, there are hover buttons now, have been for over a week iirc. oh, and the systray should be fixed now, really this time (assuming the patch has been committed). :) the panel's been improving, and some other layout bugs appear to be gone (yay! I can see all of the fortune applet now!)
I think applets are just easier to report on, and/or came at more convenient times for the commit digest.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
Your memories are fadding :) This week : weather applet. Last week : Aaron about plasma containement. The week before : ah right nothing. The week before before : the vision of raptor. Then before again : raptor. And then a month before finding again some stuff about plasma. (all at the top of the page).
Re: Enough of plasma applets
I wouldn't worry too much, Danny - a while back, every commit digest was filled with "Where's all the plasma news?!?" rants - you can't please all of the people all of the time ;)
Bang up job, and lots of little "featurettes" this week - much appreciated!
Re: Enough of plasma applets
I find it quite interesting and helpful. Being working on plasma myself, the information of what's going on in my neighbours codebase is really helpful, especially since most of the stuff is quite new, and I might want to peak into, for example Shawn's code how he did something.
So the value of the commit-digest is not only for enthusiasts to 'read up on cool stuff', but it's also very valuable as an "internal communication tool" for us developers.
Of course, you can choose to just ignore the parts you've read enough about already ... :-)
Re: Enough of plasma applets
i couldn't believe the weather applet video.. I heard so much about it, then there's nothing to it... WHO CARES? it's not done... it grabs some content off of a web page or some database, seriously?! This is front and centre? haha come on! There are more important things than some silly little half baked weather applet.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
Somewhere between the idea and the finished product there lies what you are seeing now. Without this "silly half baked weather applet" there will never be a "serious fully baked weather applet".
In short, fuck off.
Thank you
Re: Enough of plasma applets
No need to be rude.
Putting front and center the subject of a trivial unfinished project is quite silly.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
Then you must find the very idea of commit-digest silly...
Re: Enough of plasma applets
go take a look at the code for the weather data engine, then come back here and tell me it's trivial or unfinished.
the applet isn't the news, it's the ability to grab the data. and in case it isn't wildly apparent, here's why it's cool:
it abstracts away the sourcing of the data. so it can grab data from the internet, from a local weather station .. whatever there is an ion for. we're up to 4 this week, 6 by next week.
the data itself is in turn abstracted so that you can show this weather data via any QObject with the dataUpdated slot.
now, it is just weather info. but when it comes to weather, this is pretty comprehensive and pretty much the pinacle of what one could want. pluggable back ends, completely API neutral front end.
it even does matching on what you type to find the locations ... again, with any backend you choose.
now, that may not make you all hot and bothered. but if it doesn't, you're probably not the audience for a weekly on the details of software development =)
Re: Enough of plasma applets
So in order to appreciate software development I should get all warm inside every time someone overengineers a solution? Because thats clearly what this is.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
I'm not much into these applets, and doubt I will use them, but I like reading about them.
I think the problem is, that with KDE4, there is so much within it to cover, and so little space to cover it all. It's impossible to cover what everyone wants to read about, so you can just cover little bits that excite those who are doing these articles.
I'm not interested in some of the stuff that is written, so I just bypass it, can't you do that, is it really necessary to start a thread that you dont want to read any more about it, can you not just skip reading about it?
Re: Enough of plasma applets
*sigh*
ok, first, it's not over-engineered. it's really bare essentials to deliver the end goal (which relates to a particular sort of user experience, not the engine itself).
second, you don't have to get all warm inside. but that wasn't the point, wast it? no, the mike guy above was rather unkind about something he evidently didn't grasp overly well. my reply wasn't to make you feel all warm and fuzzy, it was to help mike and others like him to better understand what is actually interesting about an apparently uninteresting thing.
and yeah, it's a bit frustrating to work on something, show what's there thus far and have someone who only knows how to measure a particular sort of end result and lacks a real understanding of what's going on come along and go, "pfft. big deal."
Re: Enough of plasma applets
Being a programmer myself, I know exactly what you mean. I believe this "issue" shows one of the most significant differences between developers and users. Users just don't give two damns about the guts as long as the app works. Developers are able to appreciate the effort that went into the design, but it's sort of pointless to try to explain that to users.
Personally, I'd just say that there's more than meets the eye and stop right there. :)
Re: Enough of plasma applets
"Being a programmer myself, I know exactly what you mean. I believe this "issue" shows one of the most significant differences between developers and users. Users just don't give two damns about the guts as long as the app works."
Indeed. This isn't just about fancy design. It's about getting the guts and infrastructure right, so in the future there is very little work for developers to do when they want to come up with something new and cool. All the users then say "Wow, how did you do that, and why hasn't X got that feature?"
Re: Enough of plasma applets
No no no, you seem to be misunderstanding.
This isn't some sort of revolutionary feature that will cause the desktop to leap ahead miles and miles, putting those pesky gnomies, let alone redmond, out of buisness forever.
This.
Is.
The.
Weather.
A great extensible design doesn't mean a thing when the subject matter is so trivial.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
This news items clearly goes over your head, despite the many thoughtful explanations in response which have shown more excercise in patience and goodwill in communication that I doubt you can ever muster, so why must you continue to display your ignorance with each successive post?
Re: Enough of plasma applets
Thanks for the well thought out, informative, and interesting reply.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
Your very welcome.
Re: Enough of plasma applets
oh boy, what a temper.
the post was questioning why the unfinished weather applet was front and centre. it doesnt do much so why is it highlighted? surely there are more important things (like many of the things listed much further below)
i'll be thinking of the importance of the weather applet the next time i click the bookmark i have for my local weather.
for those interested, I'll be uploading a screencast of myself clicking bookmarks i have for the few cities that are important to me. I will show the viewers at home how they too can search for the weather.
so lo-tech programmers are probably cringing everywhere.
oh well.
KDE4daily dosn't work here
I use a del inspiron 6400 with dual core and 2048 RAM.
See the screenshot for the error message.
Re: KDE4daily dosn't work here
This doesn't appear to be a KDE issue, but just the core Linux distro underneath. Grub, or whatever boot loader is using uuid identifiers to point to the root partition. When grub comes up, you should be able to press "e" to edit the boot menu, and edit the root entry to say /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3, whatever. Try it a few times, and you may be able to find the correct device.
Re: KDE4daily dosn't work here
If you are using (K)Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), then please read this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3660695&postcount=10
Non-Compositing Support
I have an ati r500 card in my laptop, and I can't use fglrx, its worthless. Composite will run, but is nearly unusable; also, composite does not have shadows for me even though the option is checked. I simply cannot get shadows. Oxygen is not very usuable if there is no compositing support; everything blends into eachother and it just isn't very pretty. There are no shadows where there need to be shadows.
Please kde devs, don't force me to use kde3! provide at least basic compatability with non-compositing systems!
http://www.alweb.dk/gallery/engelsk/oxygen_menu
Re: Non-Compositing Support
it's being worked on.
Re: Non-Compositing Support
Another thing is that kwin compositing is a __lot__ slower than compiz for example. I have a geforce 6600gt with the nvidia drivers, and kwin with compositing turned on is simply unusably slow.
Without compositing the plasma panel gets black borders, which just looks alarming to me. So I end up using compiz instead of kwin when I run kde4 sessions.
Anyone know why it is so much slower? Is anyone working on it?
Re: Non-Compositing Support
here feels slow when the system is under big job, like compiling from svn ;)
Re: Non-Compositing Support
"Anyone know why it is so much slower?" "
Vastly less man-hours poured into it than Compiz Fusion, and much less end-user testing to date.
"Is anyone working on it?"
Two people are working on it when they get a chance. More are needed.
Re: Non-Compositing Support
I think it's an Nvidia issue...
In compiz, you can disable detect refresh rate but i think kwin do it by default...
Re: Non-Compositing Support
I have also Geforce 6600gt with Nvidia drivers. When I use KDE 4 on one monitor 1920x1024 everything is little slower than KDE 4. It's annoying but usable. But when I enable Xinerama and add another 1920x1024 monitor everything is really deadly slow. Not only shadows and windows. But dropdowns are the most annoying. When I click on a dropbox when choosing weather for example, for a second dropbox shows and then disappears. And it is impossible to choose anything from it.
I am willing to test if anything fixes this.
nick mabu on freenode.
IMHO Plasma looks very nice now, but it is not usable, at least for me.
Re: Non-Compositing Support
You can change the colours just as you could in KDE3. I don't use compositing either, so when I tried out KDE4, I used a different colour scheme, and it worked well.
System Settings -> Appearance & Themes -> Colours (or something like that).