KDE Commit-Digest for 11th June 2006

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: oKular gets a backend for the DjVu document format. amaroK is renamed Amarok. Guidance, a modular configuration GUI, gets a WINE module. Developments in the Kopete "OSCAR (AIM) File Transfer", "WorKflow" and "KDevelop C# Parser" Summer Of Code projects. KFormula, the KOffice formula component, defaults to the OpenDocument format.

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Comments

by AJ (not verified)

Why was it renamed? I thought they cleaned out all legal problems.

by superstoned (not verified)

??? Its one of the first things in the digest. Guess you didn't read it, did you :D

by Corbin (not verified)

"amaroK" was renamed to "Amarok". The only change was the capitalization.

by anonymous (not verified)

> /trunk/playground/artwork/Oxygen/theme/svg/filesystems:
> changing the defualt folder color to brown

WTF?

by james brown (not verified)

As a matter of fact it looks rather good (not brown as such, but the icons)

by anonymous (not verified)

yes the icons do look good
it's the changes in the colors who leave me a bit disappointed

http://commit-digest.org/issues/2006-06-11/moreinfo/549548/#visual
http://commit-digest.org/issues/2006-06-11/moreinfo/549822/#visual

i find the originals much better looking than the modified versions
..and the curl on the document icon looks very bad IMHO
but i understand that it's a working in progress

by me (not verified)

How many blue folders do you have?

by Sergio (not verified)

I have many blue folders, and no brown one

by James (not verified)

I think most of my (real life) folders are pink or blue. I don't think I have any brown ones.

by Daniel "Suslik" D. (not verified)

"How many blue folders do you have?"

Well, I have enough of brown folders not to want them any more.

Seriously, no amount of brown-ification will make KDE completely palatable for Gnomies. Running after another group of customers can be very very bad for the current ones.

by Sebien (not verified)

Is it a fake? An april fool? ;-)

I like much more the blue folder than the depressing brown!

And by the way, the folder presented at http://www.oxygen-icons.org/?cat=3 was also more enjoying!

I understand you want more real-looking icons, but it's too much.
Please make a better compromise between vibran colors and dark colors.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Must be bad Ubuntu influence.

by Giovanni (not verified)

Bleah! Please give us blu back! :'((((
PLEASE...

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

i was chatting with ken about this today and it was just an experiment to see how it looks and to see if anyone was actually paying attention. the latter is obviously a "yes"... =)

note that the other folder icons with the emblems on them didn't become brown.

anyways ... one of the issues with bright blue icons is that it makes for a pretty bright and loud desktop. but brown is a questionable alternative. we talked about going manilla with blue highlights (e.g. on the folder's tab).

but yeah, don't worry about kde4 coming out with depressing brown folders. =)

by Robert Knight (not verified)

What about eye-searing Orange! It was very popular in early builds of Dapper ;)

by André Somers (not verified)

It would probably make the release very popular with the Dutch ;-)

by Mark Hannessen (not verified)

I am affraid the WK will be over before the kde4 release :p

by cm (not verified)

WK as in World _K_up? Ouch.

by Pingwing (not verified)

I would try to use as many glass-like/gray colors as possible, and add small accents of bright colors. The colorful accents will really stick out that way while the overall look of the desktop is still quite subtle.

Just an idea..

by Matija "hook" &... (not verified)

I agree - brown's not my cup of tea. I prefere more alive colours - if I wanted to have damper colours I'd use a different hue of blue or green or even gray.

But if all comes to worse - I'll just change the default iconset for another one.

Here's an idea: what about if you add two or more default iconthemes? KDE already comes with several styles that you can choose from when you first run it - why not do the same with icons? Then the brown-addicts and the blue-addicts can be both happy and probably some pink-lovers, gray-chillers and others as well...

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

well, we do ship with a few icon themes though the selection is generally between "default beauty", "lo-fi" and "for accessibility purposes". an icon theme is a stupidly huge amount of work, which is why you see so many themes and so few complete icon sets.

by Matija "hook" Suklje (not verified)

I know. But what I'm saying is - if you're so far ahead with the iconset, I think it shouldn't take as much effort to just release two versions of the same set only in a different colour (it's SVG, right?) instead of making two completely different sets.

It was just a thought though... I'd probably prefere anything over brown (it just seems ...well, muddy, to avoid a more vivid description) - have you thought about pastel hues? Pastel green or violet/lavender, IMHO, would make it softer and easier on the eyes - look at the Ricebowl icon theme for example where gray and pastel colours are dominant.

But, please, no brown ...it reminds me of mud and toilet sessions. o_O

by Matija "hook" Suklje (not verified)

Ok, I've changed one of the folder SVG's colour fills and changed it to a more lavender-pink-ish tone (should be more lavender-like, but I suck)

here's the little bugger:
http://matija.suklje.name/files/violet-ish_oxygen_folder.svg

Please ...take take this mock-up with reserve - it could have been done sooooo much better, but
1) I'm a lawyer and suck at CG (it should have a more lavender-like hue)
2) I did it in 2 minutes, because I'm very VERY short on time because of the exams I'm having this friday.

Also, I'm not trying to say anything bad about the artists - they probably put a huuuuuuge amount of effort into shaping these SVG's and make the colour transitions. I just made a quick "hack" to them, to help back up my arguments.

by Jo Øiongen (not verified)

Please please please! Do NOT do this! Blue might not be thje best, but brown is way much worse!

Jo

by David (not verified)

I think that blaming for the color of a folder of a work in progess theme in artwork/playgound while there is a full clear "readme" file is just a waste of time. Like the time I've just wasted to reply to this ... too late :)

by Shriramana (not verified)

People, I reported https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132749 so that the developers do not forget to return the colour to blue. As of today, this misdeed has not been corrected. Please add your full 20 votes each and bring back our blue icons!

So Decibel (http://decibel.kde.org) gets a first (unofficial) announcement.
The reasoning behind it is not quite obvious yet at first sight, but it could mean that for chatting or voice you don't need Kopete or rely on your chat app, but could do it from anywhere on the desktop with the help of this backend framework. The use cases will still have to clear up. Decibel gives a reasoning why they came to the conclusion to favour Tapioca (http://tapioca-voip.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Tapioca) over Telepathy (http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/).

But on the other hand a Kopete developer writes how they could change Kopete to use Telepathy
(http://blog.bepointbe.be/index.php/2006/06/09/14-instant-messaging-integ...)

Without any more knowledge, it looks like they should come to a common ground to avoid drifting apart which would be hard to overcome later... This seems to me as if Juk or Amarok would be defaulting to and using Gstreamer instead of Phonon (or even worse, if Telepathy is no backend for Decibel which looks like the abstraction layer to only Tapioca).

Would be interesting to see support for Skype, Woize, SIP etc in KDE. Kopete?

Perhaps they should take an approach with communication service like phonon does. See also this blog here:
http://frinring.wordpress.com/2006/06/11/its-about-contacts/

Decibel is like Phonon. It's KDE's layer to provide the desktop and apps with the functionality of the backend. So imho it would be wise if Kopete used Decibel. The backend for Decibel, Tapioca, then provides the plugins for protocols like ICQ or VOIP. So the functionality is bundled in the backend, where the work would be done to properly support the different protocols.
The app itself could then concentrate work on being usable and easy to work with. Also there would be the possibility to add communication ability to other parts of the desktop (light-weight chat instead of full-blown app).

by Vlad (not verified)

Another good Voice over IP (VoIP) client is Open Wango:

http://OpenWengo.org

It has several advantages:

* Open Wengo has strong developer and commercial support from France's leading VoIP provider
* Open Wengo is 100% Free & Open Source software (GPL-licensed)
* The backend library is clearly separate from the GUI frontend, making it easy to incorporate in applications.
* The existing GUI frontend is Qt-based and crossplatform (Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X)

by Dmitri (not verified)

Openwengo is not ready for wide use, to many crashes, luck of essential functions (like info retrieval for a contact, not capable for multiple SIP profiles). However, It does have videocall feature.
IMO Skype still lead VoIP market (no SIP, which is bad ).
I'm still looking for a good SIP Qt4 client.

by Joe (not verified)

What ever happened to the Tenor project? The Commit-Digest listed every important KDE4 project but Tenor. Does anyone know the status of Tenor or if it is being developed at all?

Project Interview:
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5816/4/

Appeal projects (including Tenor):
http://appeal.kde.org/wiki/Projects

by Anonymous (not verified)
by WTAC (not verified)

Tenor has been replaced by kitten, real activity and real code in svn.

by sundher (not verified)

What is the current state of native search for KDE? I know we currently have Kerry but that's based on Beagle. Kat has stagnated and Tenor is quiet. No word on clucene. Kitten looks interesting. Is it intended to replace Kat? How is all this going to be integrated? (I currently use Recoll/Xapian myself.)

by St. Kevin (not verified)

I'm probably not the first to ask it, but I'm quite curious as to why the font of the digest is so large?

by Isaac (not verified)

I think the font size and type is perfect. Makes it stand apart from other technical documents, and it's easier to read.

by anonymous (not verified)

yes, a SANE font size would be very welcomed
at least make it an option..

by Jonathan Dietrich (not verified)

Font size looks fine here.

ctrl + -

by Danny Allen (not verified)

Quite a few people have asked why the font size is so large (of course, it really depends on your font settings), so i've just added the setting to the options panel of the digest:

http://commit-digest.org/options/

Enjoy :)
Danny

by ac (not verified)

Am I correct thinking this: http://commit-digest.org/issues/2006-06-11/files/549822/now/zip.png
is the current proposal for ZIP icon? If yes - please, change it.
ZIP only in English means what is shown on that picture, in (most) other languages it is just meaningless three letters. It might be a clever pun for English KDE users, but for the rest of us it is just going to cause an AWFUL lot of confusion. Please replace it with a standard package icon or something that doesn't depend on ZIP meaning well, a zip.

by Matija "hook" Suklje (not verified)

It would be great if all the compressed archives would follow the same theme icon-wise. At the end of the day, in KDE where we have Ark it is more importaint to see from the first glance that it's an archive then a .zip or .gz Which type of archive it is, would be better to find out on the second glance.

What you want is:
*glance*
Oh, in this folder I have an archive - I'll just open/uncompress it.
*look*
Who sent me a .rar? I usually use tarballs. Oh, well, nevermind.

What is less desirable:
*glance*
Where's that archive he sent me? Ok, I see archives ...but where's that one?
*look*
Oh, here's the bugger - damn, .zip's always looking different from the rest of the archives.

Or even worse:
*glance*
Oh, dear god! So many different icons!!
*concentrate*
OK, so in what format did he send it to me? Was it a .zip or a tarball?
*look for tarballs*
Nope, it wasn't a tarball ..geeez...
*look for .zip*
Nope, there's no .zip icon with that name as well... Man, I'll probably find it faster if I just use the console...

p.s. I did *not* look at other archive icons - couldn't find them. I only persume they're different then a .zip, because a tarball (ball of tar, haha) would look pretty silly with a zip on it - as would an .arj

by Patcito (not verified)

I like it very much. I think it's very funny please keep it don't change it! By the way I'm not English and I still enjoy it :)

by Matija "hook" Suklje (not verified)

It is funny.

But it looks aweful as a mimetype IMHO - especially in the .tgz example

http://websvn.kde.org/*checkout*/trunk/playground/artwork/Oxygen/theme/s...

by Patcito (not verified)

well IMVHO it looks great.

by ac (not verified)

But you KNOW English. Not everyone does, and for them this icon is going to be a huge "WTF?!".

by Patcito (not verified)

in my country most people use the same word for ZIP as in English. And in every country people that know fashion a bit call it zip too. Ask your gf :)
Can't KDE be a bit cool and sexy? as long as we don't use the same icon as Windows, people will get lost anyway so let's get them lost in a cool and fashion and sexy way damnit (-:

by Matija "hook" Suklje (not verified)

I still think the humoungous zip is annoying.

I've gone through the webSVN of Oxygen and looked at pretty much two thirds of all the icons that are submited there already ...and I don't like it.

It's just me, don't worry - I just prefere icons that don't kick me in the face with what they're all about ...you know, I'm more of the timid icon guy - I like the icons that are pretty, but don't scream at you, so you can ignore them and concentrate on the more importaint jobs. :]

Maybe, the Oxygen people are right! - Oxygen iconset is there as default -> default is there to help complete newbies to find their way around -> so, default has to scream at them what's what
...meaning, a lot of oldbies don't like default (because they know what's what and they don't like the screaming) -> that's why things are themable and why we have kde-look.org :]

...now if only I could get the guys behind Sparkling, Ricebowl and Zenith to update those iconsets ;)

Oh, even if they are - the zip is still bloody annoying!! Sweet merciful heavens - just look at the icon for .tgz! It's a box with a humoungous zip over it!! O_o

by ac (not verified)

> in my country most people use the same word for ZIP as in English.
Well, here they don't

> And in every country people that know fashion a bit call it zip too.
Here they don't, at least I have never heard that. And I would be suprised if it was used here because the word zip would have a really weird declension.

> Ask your gf :)
Well, something is wrong if our hypothetical user would have to ask his girlfriend to know what is the icon used for archives. Especially since he first would have to KNOW that he should ask his gf.

> Can't KDE be a bit cool and sexy?
Yes it can be, but not at a cost of usability. There are many ways which don't carry the same price tag.

> as long as we don't use the same icon as Windows, people will get lost anyway so let's get them lost in a cool and fashion and sexy way damnit (-:
We don't have to use the same icon as Windows, even if we don't want to confuse users. I've never seen anyone confused by KDE's folder icon, despite the fact that it is not identical to Windows.

And would you be happy if someone replaced the icon for OGG files with a sphere, because ogg means sphere in some language you don't know? What if for the same reason HTML files became dogs, JPEG turned into little houses, MPEG changed into a dish of spaghetti? What if icon for folder became a helmet, because in KDE3 they were blue, and blue is Lancelot's favourite colour, and the real Lancelot probably wore a helmet?

The main function of a desktop environment is to help user do his work. If we can keep the desktop pretty (for example by adding more blue into colour schemes, background, and everywhere else), then it's good, but to put an obstacle in that workflow just to make the desktop a bit cooler is not a good idea IMHO.