KDE 3.3.1: Bugs Squashed, Quanta Gets VPL

KDE 3.3.1 has been released. This latest and greatest from KDE mercilessly exterminates bugs in Konqueror, KHTML, the KDE Edutainment module, the KDE JuK box and more. Better yet, Plastik is now ridiculously fast and has become a strong contender for the default style in KDE 3.4. Also, the Quanta Web Development tool has been enhanced and now has the VPL (Visual Page Layout aka WYSIWYG) mode enabled. For the gory details, read the KDE 3.3.1 changelog.

But wait... How do you get your hands on all this goodness? We have binary packages and source packages and then we have Konstruct (details). So there.

And btw, translations have been greatly improved in this release.

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Comments

by Alex (not verified)

What happened to the "we only change styles for major releases due to the work involved for documentation and user adjustment..." crowd?

I think that since we've kept with this all the time, might as well use Keramick as default once more. Plastick will easily be selected by users and most distributions will also do the same.

by quaff (not verified)

"Plastik is now ridiculously fast and has become a strong contender for the default style"

You're not reading this properly, its saying that Plastik is BECOMING a strong contender for the default style; it is not stating that Plastik IS now the default style.

They haven't changed the default style yet :P

by Anonymous (not verified)

> They haven't changed the default style yet :P

Plastik *is* in kdebase and default in HEAD.

by ac (not verified)

HEAD is not released :)

by blacksheep (not verified)

HEAD will be the base for 3.4 or 4.0 release.

by the jumpy gnome... (not verified)

3.4, 3.4 for now :)

by Anonymous (not verified)

The documentation team withdrew their former objection due to new tools.

by Tom (not verified)

To clarify, they now have a tool that allows them to automatically generate screenshots in any style, in any language, for documentation.

Previous to this tool, a change in style would have required the docs team to manually retake and touch up *every* screenshot in the docs!

by KDE User (not verified)

sounds interesting. What tool is this. U have a link?

by Nicolas Goutte (not verified)

The discussion about switching to Plastik is in the thread http://lists.kde.org/?t=109500725600001&r=2&w=2

I do not remember the discussion enough to know if the tool was only described or if there was a real link somewhere in the discussion.

Have a nice day!

by adsfa23143214 (not verified)

Yes but where is the discussion where everyone agreed on switching to Plastik, including the Keramik maintainer?

It just happened and as a regular developer, I certainly don't remember agreeing :)

by Nicolas Goutte (not verified)

I do not think that the agreement to switch was made in this thread.

It was discussed many times before that changing the default style was needed. The only problem remaining was the documentation that had to remain synchronized with a change.

Have a nice day!

by ac (not verified)
by JohnFlux (not verified)

Isn't that non-Free ?

Is kde going to rely on this?

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

it isn't an integral (e.g. required) tool for development. it's simply a tool with no Free Software equivalent that lets us get a certain, specific task that needs to get done right now in a timely manner so we can get on with the business of producing another great revision of our Free/Open Source Software desktop.

it's similar to our icons: there just weren't any good Free Software graphics packages suitable for doing professional icon design. instead of shipping no icons or crappy icons, the artists used various non-Free tools to get the necessary job done and released the results under an Open Source license. everybody benefits. as Free tools become available, they get used for creating icons.

by planetzappa (not verified)

It *is* free for KDE apps

by cm (not verified)

Yes, it's free as in "free beer" for KDE usage:
http://dot.kde.org/1081440693/

by John Styles Freak (not verified)

I've never seen anyone saying "we only change styles for major releases". It would even be contradictory since Keramik became default in KDE 3.1. What many say is that styles should be kept for at least some minor releases, to avoid constantly changing KDEs image and the effort from changing all the documentation.

Keramik was kept for 3 minor releases now (KDE 3.1, 3.2, 3.3). The next release, KDE 3.4, will have a long life so we won't have opportunities to change defaults in a long time. So it's natural to place much emphasis on good defaults and general polishing for this release.

by Shulai (not verified)

Long life? How much? I mean, larger than 3.2 and 3.3, yes, but I guess KDE 4 will come less than a year after 3.4.
OTOH, I wonder, if there was so much complains about Keramik, what about Classic?
Yes, Classic KDE2 plain vanilla style. while the WM style is a bit lame, but the widget style it is still clean, fast, and nice with those soft gradients.
The "we need a default look as shiny or shinier than Windows and Mac can offer" does not catch me. XP's green and blue look is ugly, and Keramik was simply a response to that.
Plastic is nice, but I guess there will be a lot of complaints if it is the default, as well. But I don't remember any complaints against Classic.

Just my opinion, of course.

by ac (not verified)

You don't remember any complaints? Boy, that one made me laugh out loud! Do you even know what the KDE Classic style is?

You must have severely confused projects if you think there ever was a moment when there were no complaints. :-)

by blacksheep (not verified)

Classic, especially High Color, is not that bad. I think you're the one that doesn't know what that style is. Check it on KControl.

by Joe (not verified)

I complained. I hated it. Use it if you want, troll.

by Brandybuck (not verified)

KDE 3.4 will have a new style in kdeartwork, Phase . Like Highcolor Classic, this is "clean, fast, and nice with those soft gradients". It was designed for the same people that like Highcolor Classic.

We certainly want KDE to have a good first impression. Which is why the next default will probably be Plastik, which has an understated elegance sorely lacking in Luna and Aqua. But it won't suit everyone, which is why we have other styles.

by KDE User (not verified)

Great. I lacked good styles like this one. Looks crisp and with clear borders, good.

by gerd (not verified)

I strongly disagree, first impression counts and Keramik is out of style. While it is important to remain API consistent I don't see a reason to let worse layout remain.

by Martin (not verified)

Biggest improvement (by reading the announcement,
haven't downloaded it yet) seems to be that
KPDF now works. Why isn't that mentioned?
Or did I get it wrong?

by Anonymous (not verified)

The announcement doesn't mention this, you read the changelog? As mentioned the changelog is to be considered as incomplete (lazy maintainers). There are also other big improvements (eg KNotes Kontact plugin).

by Jason Keirstead (not verified)

Sorry, but this is way out of line. You try being a maintainer of a larger app and keeping track of 5-10 commits / day, all the while maintaining a job and spending time with the family. Oh, and you would probably also like to do some coding yourself, since that is probably why you joined the apps team in the first place...

There is a big difference between a maintainer being excessively busy and being lazy. These people are incredibly generous with their free time considering the majority of them don't get paid a dime for it, and that they also must make personal sacrifices for the project. Calling them "lazy" is totally unacceptable.

by John Relaxed Freak (not verified)

I don't think he was being serious... relax...

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

I don't think you should tell him to relax. I think you should do something. ;-)

What have you done to help a project lately? He's right. A primary reason to release open source is the currency of community respect, just as monetary remuneration is for commercial projects. Calling commercial developers lazy is no big deal, as long as you keep buying their software. Calling free software developers lazy is analogous to collecting a refund. It is a debit of respect.

All of this is no big deal except that with millions of users and hundreds of contributors it is utterly absurd for someone in the over 99% of people who don't contribute to call the less than 1% of people who are doing anything lazy. It's doubtful anyone in the less than 1% group would say that and it is worth making the point of personal cost to put such things in perspective.

by John Relaxed Freak (not verified)

I agree with all that. Just not so sure he actually called the developers lazy, seems just an harmless joke to me (of course I don't know for sure).

by John Relaxed Freak (not verified)

By the way, I just thought I'd add this :D
ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.3.1/SuSE/README

----------------------------------------------------
#
# KDE 3.3.1 packages for SUSE distributions.
#

Sorry, we were to lazy to build packages yet.
They will be here tomorrow, hopfully.

by ac (not verified)

Seems to have been updated. Kopete and Kontact have Novell GroupWise support!

by John Relaxed Freak (not verified)

Speaking of Kopete, beware!
SuSE packagers compiled Kopete without Jabber support!

by AC (not verified)

Why would they do that?

by John Kopete Freak (not verified)

I don't know, mistake probably... see:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88277

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

I went through the commits and added more detais to the kdepim section of the changelog. A lot of annoyances were fixed, and especially those who use disconnected IMAP are encuraged to upgrade.

All in all I want to thank everyone involved for participating in this amazing KDE project. The branch regulary profitted from backports from HEAD, especially due to the proko2 project, which uses the branch as basis. KDE PIM is more active, alive and kicking than ever before. Thanks to everyone involved and especially to all the enduring bug reporters that helped reproducing bugs.

by Jel (not verified)

I've been hearing a lot about Disconnected IMAP with 3.3, but I wonder if the normal IMAP mode is kept in sync? It does seem a little flaky, too -- progress bars for moving messages that seem to stop halfway through, even though the move itself seems to complete fine, for example.

Is plain IMAP still being developed? I gather disconnected IMAP caches things locally, right? Which is a bit redundant if my IMAP server is local?

by rsl (not verified)

...but somehow the fedora kdebase package is 99megs huge?

by rsl (not verified)

aha, looks like it will be fixed soon.

---
"From:
Than Ngo
Reply-To:
Development discussions related to Fedora Core
Date:
Wednesday 13 October 2004 15:48:40
Groups:
gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel

...
i have noticed it today. it's a problem on local build machine. new KDE
rpms will be uploaded on ftp.kde.org for fc2 today.

Than"

by Anonymous (not verified)

I know it's OT, but I think this deserves some attention: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=16962

Any chance we will see these patches in 3.4?

by Joe (not verified)

Very cool patches. The only tricky one is the qt patch. I do NOT want to rebuild qt and then kdelibs, kdebase...ugh.

by Niels (not verified)

For Gentoo, there's a guide with ebuilds here:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=236593

by John Good Looki... (not verified)

That looks excellent! I hope it can be merged for KDE 3.4!

by QV (not verified)

Ewwwww....

I HATE that rounded icon selection. It looks so horrifically antiquated, like it belongs in GEOS or something equally old.

by Brandon Petty (not verified)

Man that is a slick patch. Not only does it make KDE look great, it is also useful as far as atracting the eye to where you are working on the screen. I would love to see this added. The rounded icon selection, as stated above, might not be for everyone. I think it looks good, but I would probably preffer sharp clean corners.

As a side question, since I have not upgraded kde lately... does moving icons on the desktop still suck? I would pick up an icon, place it where I wanted it, and it would magically be placed about 10-20 pixels away. Close enough to work, but just far enough away to piss you off and make you redrag.

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

Maybe you have "Automatically lineup icons" activated?

by ac (not verified)

Ya on my old KDE 3.2, the final resting position of the icon seems to be the *center* of the pointer. When I'm dragging it however, the pointer is closer to the top left of the icon. Seems like a centering bug.

by Alex (not verified)

it adresses some of my most important concerns here http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58944 and looks great!

by Wizard580 (not verified)

Very nice patches... but QT patch a little strange way to do things... I'm not KDE/Qt developer, but think, that any problem can be fixed with standart methods.

Great work!!! :-)
Need this in 3.3.2 !!!!!!!!!