KDE 3.0Beta1: Ready For a Test Drive

The KDE Project today (OK, yesterday now)
announced
the release of KDE 3.0Beta1. The announcements contains the typical
package locations and summary of changes (visit the
developer's website for
a more detailed list of planned feature additions for
KDE 3.0 and the current progress). Since beta releases always
provide an ideal opportunity for newcomers to get involved and make a difference, the release also provides intriguing suggestions to
those of you who may in the past have pondered, "I really want
to contribute to KDE and help make my favorite desktop even better, but
what can I possibly do?
".

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Comments

I think rearranging the user's view is bad, even if it means the messages will be out of order temporarily. Certainly the next time the folder is loaded the messages should be sorted that way, and even if the user tries to sort the messages again the should be rearranged that way. However, switching the order of messages on deletion is bad behavior, even if it is technically correct.

Think of it this way: When you are looking through a list of messages, and you delete one, which is more important to you: that the messages stay in absolute technically correct sorted order, or that the list stays the same as much as possible to avoid interrupting your train of thought. I think the desires of the user win out over the strict sorting here.

by Michael Häckel (not verified)

And how shall that work then, if new mail arrives in such a folder with broken sorting?
Besides that we currently cache the sort order to not require resorting always the folder is selected. If we can't assume the mails being sorted correctely this causes a heavy slowdown with huge folders.
The only possibility I see to solve this is to mark messages as deleted and really remove them later.

by adrian Bool (not verified)

You could store a date for each thread, which is initilised to
the date of the first message of that thread.

Threads are then sorted by their dates and emails are then
sorted by their dates within their respective thread.

> The only possibility I see to solve this is to mark messages as deleted and really remove them later.

I was just about to suggest that, until I noticed you just did. That seems like a good solution to me. Would it be too much trouble to implement?

As I see it reading/deleting/moving mail and collecting new email are two different processes (OK I know that's just because I'm brought up on offline email readers, and have no use for biff or whatever to auto-reread my mail), but when I'm reading/deleting/moving my mail, I want to have the order preserved for the entire read/delete/move of all of my new mail.

When new mail arrives it should trigger a sort process, before it is displayed, and I'm happy for new mail to re-arrange the sort order, but deleting/moving an email should NOT retrigger the sort process.

The two solutions as I see it are (as suggested by others) mark the message as deleted, and expunge later (as pine etc), OR delete the message, and make a journal of it for the later sort process, waiting for a (user option of: resort on newmail/manual resort only/resort on open folder/etc)sort process to kick in, thus allowing the sort process to maintain it's assumption that the list is always sorted.

Hope this is of some help to someone,

Will
--

Heh.. Well, you go ahead and think harder. :) There are plenty of folks that can easily re-produce this bug.... I'm simply amazed at the developers unwillingness to fix it.

A fix is very simple - rather than delete a message immediately, flag it deleted, then expunge either when the user invokes an expunge option, or exits the folder, causing an expunge.

If it is such very simple, where is your patch so we can discuss if this is better?

by Scott Patterson (not verified)

I agree. I've noticed something "screwy" with Kmail and threading. I drives me nuts when I delete a message and then I appear somewhere else in my list of emails (not at the next message). Very strange behavior. I've used Mozilla's mail client and it handles much more like I'd expect it to.

Scott

Have you considered evolution. It seems lightyears ahead of kmail in both been mature and in facility. Excellent printing might I add and it also does proper html and embedded html. I use it in combination with kde all the time. Just my 2 cents :)

Cheers

evolution is pretty bloated and too microsoft outlookish
which makes me say gah. I only use pop3, so kmail is fine for me. in the changelog, it says imap support for kmail in kde3 has been done? can anyone verify this?

Why should they lie? Basic imap support is already contained in KDE 2.2.2.

I found this place because I am annoyed by another sorting problem:
When I sort a folder by date and it contains threads, I would like the threads sorted by considering the LAST entry in the thread, not the first. That way, I have the threads SORTED BY THE LATEST POSTS, ie the one with the latest post is always at the bottom (or top, depending on ^-v-selection). Thunderbird does it that way, KMail not :-/

I believe when you deal with a "great amount of items", e.g. several 1000 mails from several mailing lists, all kinds of sorting and being able to easily change and configure it becomes the TOPMOST IMPORTANT feature of the "item dealer", in this case the mail client. Maybe the developers don't have enough mail to play with? ;-)

Have fun!
Dirk

I'm thinking of quitting using kmail because of the same sorting problem with which Dirk is annoyed. It would be great if anybody could change this.

That one feature I miss a lot, too!!!
I was just in the process of switching to kmail - because of its good integration with calendar and todos - while I realized, that that kind of sorting is missing.
That made me puzzled. I am thinking what to do ...
I consider this absolutely crucial, with great amount of emails we get nowadays, especially from different sources, using different frequencies, etc.
Using this sorting, in a natural way, you get the most urgent matters on top/bottom of your mailbox, still inside its context (threads).

Are there any plans to make it possible?

Other thing - I like the feature, that I can drop an email as todo item - but I do not get this email as an attachment - as I get when I drop email as an calendar entry - this probably could be fixed easily ... pls :)

by scb (not verified)

From the feature list:

"KWin
switching desktops as necessary when dragging a window, "

This is great, probably the only thing that has been bothering me about KDE compared to Gnome or Wmaker...

by Anonymous (not verified)

I also love the possibility to know the size of a window when resizing (impossible with kwin)

by Capitaine Igloo (not verified)

such a feature is very useful when you develop a web site, and want to see your work with an exactly 800x600 window for example.

by Dan (not verified)

Ok, the SUSE RPM's worked fine on SuSE 7.2 i386..

But how we are going to test the Arabic Lang & RTL?
i can't find it in the KDE control panel..
any idia here?

Dan

by screenshot-addi... (not verified)

I'm always asking this, but "Screenshots!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

by nofips (not verified)

And it's always the same answer:
Go to www.themes.org and take the screenshots from there, as a screenshot only shows you the current style and theme.
If you are asking for screenshots for applications, then go to the applications page, but the applications in KDE3 haven't changed much yet.

by Kristof (not verified)

I have an out of the box Mandrake 8.1 Linux box and I installed KDE3 with rpm -ivh --force --nodeps *.* . Now, I can launch KDE3 applications, but I want to have the full KDE3 'experience'. How can I add KDE3 to the KDE login manager? (I already tried to add startkde3 to the KDE login manager in KDE Control panel, but this doesn't work). What should I do?

Add kde3 instead of startkde3.

I have a similar problem, I also have a Mandrake 8.1 Linux box and have tried to install KDE 3 with rpm -ivh --force --nodeps *.*

However I cannot even launch programs or anything and the only evidence of its installation is the presence of 'startkde' command, so what do I do now?

by whitescarf (not verified)

Well, this is too late but you can try and look at directory /etc/X11/Sessions and see what you got.

Create a kde3 script or edit an existing one and save it as kde3.

by cosmo (not verified)

I've installed SuSE 7.1 RPMs and the printing system doesn't seem to like my CUPS installation which worked perfectly with 2.2.2. It's not even offered as an option. Is this the packages' fault or am I doing something wrong?

That and Xft. Whatever I do, I can't get my TrueType fonts working.

by someone (not verified)

Was SuSE 7.1 delivered with CUPS? If not, the RPMs will not contain CUPS support.
Did you install KDE 2.2.2 from sources?

by cosmo (not verified)

SuSE 7.1 does not use CUPS as a default printing system, although I think it is offered on one of the CDs. I installed the RPMS for both KDE 2.2.2 and 3.0b1. In the 2.2.2 case, the CUPS support was there even before I started using CUPS at all.

It is possible that it is not compiled in by default, I'll have to check by compiling from sources I guess.

by Anne-Marie (not verified)

Hi all,
Please note the new kdeedu package (for the first time in KDE) which aims to provide educational software for parents and teachers. This new project needs your feedback and testing and also new ideas are welcome.
Website: http://edu.kde.org/
Many thanks in advance and Merry Christmas!

annma

by kidcat (not verified)

Trust me... im gonna test 'em all over and over again :) I think that kdeedu is the way for KDE since most schools dont have all that much to spend on edu-software (since win9x + office eats the budget). And KDE would be a Good Thing (TM) in that particular sector... since thats where the next generration of KDE developers are comming from ;-D

/kidcat
--
hardtoreadbecauseitissolong

by Kristof (not verified)

KDE3 works fine most of the time, but there are some annoying things. E.g. some windows don't scale right (Have a look at then attached picture). This makes it very difficult use certain KDE3 applications (desktop settings is one of them).

by antialias (not verified)

It is beta, isn't it?

by Jean-Christophe... (not verified)

This problems exists also in the Kde-2.x series when you change the fonts sizes.
The windows doesn't scale right and you don't have the display of the whole area. I didn't find out why :-(

by Malcolm Davis (not verified)

quote:
"Since beta releases always provide an ideal opportunity for newcomers to get involved and make a difference, the release also provides intriguing suggestions to those of you who may in the past have pondered, "I really want to contribute to KDE and help make my favorite desktop even better, but what can I possibly do?""

What exactly are those intriguing suggestions?
I am one of those peopel who has often pondered the wanting to make a difference but don't know how question, I have installed KDE3 but apart from maybe submitting bug reports I can't think of any way to really help as although I know a little bit of C, c++, JAVA, Perl etc. I have no where near the knowledge required to start hacking away at KDE 3's advanced system routines etc.

So, how exactly can people like me help with KDE 3?

http://www.kde.org/jobs.html especially "Open jobs" as mentioned in the announce.