Kernel Cousin KDE #33 Is Out

Wednesday, 27 February 2002  |  Someone

Aaron J. Seigo delivers again with Kernel Cousin KDE #33. This week's summary includes talk of the KDE Usability Project, adding a mini-golf game to the KDE Games package, a resolved problem with animated GIFs, a new KConfig backend based on XML, inclusion of an improved malloc into CVS, work to include SVG icon support (konqi, 128 icons, more SVG) into KDE, and KMail configuration migration.

Comments:

Megami - Neil Stevens - 2002-02-27

<a href="http://www.freekde.org/neil/megami/">http://www.freekde.org/neil/megami/</a> <p> You don't need to wait for KDE 3.1 to play it: It's out for KDE 2.2.2 now, and I'll put out a KDE 3.0 tarball for it once KDE 3.0 is finalized.

sweet svg - idspispopd - 2002-02-27

Those svg icons look good. And best of all they look good without ripping off another os. With that talk a while back about unifying themes, I think a great looking svg theme like this would be a good thing to settle on. Now we are not there yet, the svg libraries are new, and scalable gorilla needs more icons, but I can dream.

Re: sweet svg - I was using KIllustrator when... - 2002-02-28

What is SVG? KIllustrator apparently knows how to export "Scaleable Vector Graphics," and if that is the same thing, that means the SVG icons are, um, scaleable vectors. (And the big mystery is how to reimport the SVG, and if the export works at all.) Vector: the thing KIllustrator does so that a line is a line, not a diagonal row of dots. Scaleable: keeping the vectors as vectors so that the line doesn't become a diagonal row of large dots.

Re: sweet svg - Jörgen Lundberg - 2002-02-28

Sort of... Scalable Vector Graphics described in XML is a more acurrate description of it. However, you can do a lot more than just making pretty icons with it. Think flash (yuck, propiery stuff ;-). The thing about it is that it is a free and open standard. See www.w3c.org if your interested. Adobe is supposed to have a "refence" implentation of it and I also believe that Mozilla have some support for it (I also believe that a native plugin/kpart/whatever is being worked on for konq). Please note though that I am not by any means an expert on this area, so please correct me if I'm wrong... /Jörgen

Re: sweet svg - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-02-28

From what I can tell SVG is basicly an easier to parse postscript... It has some nice features of XML though, too so I wont be too critical. It will be great to have scaleable icons again, like on my "slab", haveing gone about 5 years without them you miss the little things ;) Well see how it takes off, so far it looks promiseing. -ian reinhart geiser

Re: sweet svg - Joergen Ramskov - 2002-02-28

It is (as has been stated) a W3C recommendation and an alternative to Macromedia Flash. Regarding performance/speed - well, choice is always nice and they certainly do look cool :)

Re: sweet svg - Ian Ramskov - 2004-02-15

Wow another Ramskov? You must live in Denmark! And be a distant relative!

Re: sweet svg - Joergen Ramskov - 2005-05-12

Wee...accidently stumpled upon your post :) It's actually my middle name, but who knows - we might be related in some way :)

Re: sweet svg - protoman - 2002-03-01

I probally talking something stupid, but sometime ago gnome and kde people who have neet each other on a meeting (I think it was a gnome meeting) agreed they needed some new font system on X, because true type isn't 100% free fonts, etc. So, why not using svg in this case? true type are verctorial too, so I belive it whould be possible to use svg as to build fonts. (I hope someday we'll just have to drop some files in a folder to get new fonts without having to restart x/xfs).

Re: sweet svg - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-03-01

That would actually be a cool idea, but I think that would make for a very slow system. Since (niko correct me if i am wrong) but each SVG object has its own DOM. The nice thing about TT fonts is they are everywhere, I mean, $15 and I have some very sexy ones for my desktop, or free if I use the ones that came with my MacOS. But yes, it is an issue for those users who do not have MacOS or Windows. I could have sworn thought that both Mandrake and SuSE had special TT fonts in their pro versions... I never looked into it much but that is another route to go too. just my 2c -ian reinhart geiser

Re: sweet svg - protoman - 2002-03-02

Yep, the best and most used ttf fonts are free, but they can't be freely distributed, you have to download from the original maker (mostly microsoft). This makes time for distros, so a 100% free solution would be better. Anyway, maybe using SVG as it is isn't the solution, but using only their "soul" a XML system that describes vectors.

Re: sweet svg - antialias - 2002-02-28

Actually, they are ripp off of one of MacOsX icon themes. Even famous Ximian logo with the monkey is a ripp off, and again MacOsX :) But very good ripp off ;-)

Re: sweet svg - Rajan Rishyakaran - 2002-03-01

I wonder, how GNOME ripped off Mac OS X since I find no icons that look like the SVG default theme *and* that most, if not all, Mac Os X icons are photo-realistic, while GNOME's SVG theme isn't. If it's a rip off, every thing is an rip off.

Re: sweet svg - antialias - 2002-03-01

>I wonder, how GNOME ripped off Mac OS X since I find no icons that look like the SVG default theme...< You din't search hard enough. >Mac Os X icons are photo-realistic, while GNOME's SVG theme isn't.< I never said that it was default MacOsX theme that had been ripped off. >If it's a rip off, every thing is an rip off.< Great logical conclusion.

Re: sweet svg - theorz - 2002-03-01

I do not doubt you are right, I am just interested in what exactly this mac theme looks like. I have tried google and I can't find anything. Could you post a link to some screenshots.

Re: sweet svg MAC OSX - Chris - 2004-01-21

sweet svg, Dude, MAC OSX is a "rip off" of FREE-BSD and various X Windows offerings. You do understand that the MAC OSX is just another unix-like OS running a window manager right? No, you probably don't since you are a simple minded MAC user. Put a sock in it.

Re: sweet svg MAC OSX - Roger - 2004-03-17

Dude, Realising and actually understanding what the OS is accomplishing seems to have escaped your simple little Windows mind.

Re: sweet svg MAC OSX - mick - 2004-03-28

The difference is that OSX has a focussed and managed project for the window manager, unlike linux, and BSD variants. Any "rip off" is just all the good parts. Everyone who uses Max OSX smiles and just knows what a smelly piece of shit windows is. Eat your own winsocks

Re: sweet svg MAC OSX - Miss Trin - 2004-04-21

Chris and Mick are right. See it like this anything Unix is good and Windows is shit! CHris you know your stuff! ;-)

improved malloc - KDE User - 2002-02-27

The improved malloc means more speed! Everybody compile KDE with: --enable-fast-malloc=full !!!

Re: improved malloc - DanielS - 2002-02-28

I'll take a CVS snapshot of HEAD and update my KDE3 packages (including making it use the faster malloc), as soon as I get the 2.2 packages finalized ... I also intend to package some parts of kdenonbeta, including Kolf and Atlantik; maybe even Kue if it's ready. We'll have to see. Oh yeah, and I have working qt3/kdelbis4/kdebase3 packages. Stay tuned for a URL.

Re: improved malloc - KDE User - 2002-02-28

yay debian!

Re: improved malloc - Benjamin Meyer - 2002-02-28

KAudioCreator is also pretty much 1.0 and other then converting to the kcddb library once it is finalilzed that app isn't going to change feature wise until after 3.1. <p> <a href="http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/desktop/programs/kaudiocreator/screenshots.html">kaudiocreator/screenshots.html</a> <p> -Benjamin Meyer

Re: improved malloc - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-02-28

NOTE: This is only for the IA-32 crowd.

Nikoz you seem to have an old version of xawdecode - huh - 2002-02-28

see http://xawdecode.fr.st/ if you want to watch tv with desinterlacing ;-)

desinterlacing? - Neil Stevens - 2002-02-28

What, are there hidden messages in television, encrypted with DES? :-)

Alpha blending in toolbar - Mike Machuidel - 2002-02-28

When I look at the screenshots from KDE3 I see alpha blending is enabled for the toolbar. Last week when I checked KDE3 out from CVS with the beta2 tag, I couldn't enable alphablending for toolbars, antialiasing wasn't working and truetype fonts were not showing up in the font list. I runned qtconfig and even compiled QT3 with freetype support enabled. I was only able to get transparant menus working by editting "./qtrc/kderc" or something. Anyone know what's causing this?

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - not me - 2002-02-28

I am also having this problem. I also compiled QT with freetype support. If you start a KDE app from a Konsole do you get alphablending in the toolbars, but still no AA fonts? Do you also have AA fonts in qtconfig but not in any KDE apps? Are you using Debian? Maybe we can get to the bottom of this.

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Mike Machuidel - 2002-02-28

Yep, I'm using Debian, but I didn't create deb packages. In qtconfig antialiasing is indeed working, so I could be a dependency problem. What do you mean with starting a KDE app from a Konsole to get toolbar alphablending working?

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - not me - 2002-02-28

For example, if I hit the Konqueror icon on Kicker, the resulting window's toolbar icons are not alphablended. If I start one from the command line in Konsole, it gets alphablended toolbar icons! (but still no AA fonts!) I wondered if you experienced the same phenomenon. My guess is that it has something to do with the kdeinit hack for speeding up application start times. Does any KDE developer have any hints about how I might find out for sure, and maybe try to fix this problem? Is there a way to turn off kdeinit when configuring?

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - not me - 2002-02-28

Whoops, I was misled by Konqueror's config dialog, which isn't part of the same process as Konqueror itself. Actually, apps started from a Konsole _do_ get AA fonts (marked as [xft]) in addition to alphablended toolbar icons. Now, my only question is why do apps started with kdeinit not get XRender-enhanced? I have confirmed that this is what is going on: from a Konsole "kdeinit_wrapper kcmshell fonts" results in no alphablending or AA fonts in the resulting window, while "kcmshell fonts" results in AA fonts being available and alphablending being used. (for me, YMMV). I'm using a qt-copy snapshot that is QT 3.0.2-20020219.

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Waldo Bastian - 2002-02-28

That's a bug in one of the X-libs (XRender I believe) that happens to get triggered with apps started via kdeinit. Upgrading XFree to 4.2 should solve that. Cheers, Waldo

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - not me - 2002-03-01

Ah, OK. Thanks for the info. I just found on the mailinglists that restarting kdeinit solved the problem, so I'll probably just do that until Xfree 4.2 gets into Debian.

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Mike Machuidel - 2002-02-28

It sounds like a linking problem, possibly by use of kdeinit the apps are being linked to the wrong libraries, just a guess. I'd like to check this myself as well, I only need to recompile KDE3 again, would take me about 5 hours to have it running properly. Do you know if I check KDE3 out from CVS and compiled it once, I can do incremental compilation from then on without compiling the whole source tree again.I never tried but know it should be possible, any experience with that?

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - antialias - 2002-02-28

Ys, there are some problems with alpha-blending and AA in kde3beta2, but I am sure that developers are aware of this problem. Some icons have screwed semitransparent shadows and some not (especially when you resize windows) and semitransparent shadows are darker then in kde2.2 although they have same values. Switching to 'Show hidden files' (and vice versa) doesn't show hidden files unless you click on the refresh button, desktop icons don't appear on desktop when you create new file on the desktop - you have to log out/in to acomplish that, changing fonts (from one Xft to another Xft) removes AA so you have to log out/in to get your AA back with new fonts, etc. etc., but this is not bugs.kde.org, and we are talking about beta software :)

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Mike Machuidel - 2002-03-01

Actually, I'm doing one of your tutorials right now :) , had enough trying to get AA working, these tutorials are really nice, I didn't know GIMP could be that easy :) tnx

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Daniel - 2002-03-01

Where is the tutorial? Thanks, d

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Mike Machuidel - 2002-03-02

on www.kde-look.org the author is antialias :)

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Aaron J. Seigo - 2002-02-28

there is a bug in versions of XFree86 <4.2 that causes AA to sometimes fail due to an unitialized variable. if this is indeed your problem, the attatched patch may fix it. the patch, which applies to qapplication_x11.cpp, was written by puetzk and recently posted to kde[-core]-devel.

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Aaron J. Seigo - 2002-02-28

or just upgrade to XFree86 4.2, of course =)

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - not me - 2002-03-01

Thanks! That patch does look pretty evil though. I think I'll just upgrade when xfree 4.2 gets into Debian.

Re: Alpha blending in toolbar - Aaron J. Seigo - 2002-03-01

well, the patch is actually pretty innocuous. it just makes an array of 50 longs on the stack and initializes them, thereby ensuring that the memory location XFree86 will then use is set to a known and sane value. it isn't pretty, but it isn't unsafe or doing anything overly bizarre either.

Re: - Sotf - 2002-03-01

I don't want to be rude, but I don't those "manga screenshots" are giving anime and manga a bad reputation. :-)

Re: Manga Shots - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-03-01

Eh, I think they're just SVG that he found off the web or made himself. Somebody with decent fan level talent did them, although realistically, they aren't in the 'anime/manga style', so it's a bit of a misnomer - where that term means a certain western definition of styles that originated primarily in Japan (of course, several Japanese works aren't in that "style", most notably Akira, and the style has quite a few very distinct subclasses from Tezuka to Miyazaki to Go Nagai and then to the modern studio synthesizers and innovators in Studio Gainax and Studio Bones). Of course, by a strict "proper" (i.e., literal) meaning of the word, it's dead on... as are Peanuts and Sandman, as well as all animated works (many amotaku don't know that manga covers animated as well as still art). Um, yeah... let me back away from fandom in general and just say: They aren't really very "Mangaish" anyway. And those who wouldn't know that wouldn't know what "Manga" means. But hey... they are SVGs, and right now the format is kinda rare. I wonder what the archetypal SVG will be (a la the cad nozzle)? -- Evan

Re: Manga Shots - not me - 2002-03-01

That tiger picture seems to be pretty archetypal of most vector formats. I've seen it in lots of screenshots.

Re: Manga Shots - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-03-01

I've always associated the tiger with postscript, and it's used to demonstrate various postscript interpreters. -- Evan

feature - daniel - 2002-03-01

When i want to do things in kcontrol menu that needs to be root, is bored to log as root and run kcontrol.Would it be difficult to add kdesu in the parts of kcontrol that needs to be root to use this modules? On Windows 2000 they implement this feature.

Re: feature - not me - 2002-03-01

It has already been done. Are you using the newest KDE? For example the "Login manager" and "Date & Time" modules have a "Modify" button that uses kdesu to start the module as root.

Re: feature - Matt - 2002-03-01

The next step is to do the same to file browsing in Konq. You browse to /etc as a normal user and want to edit fstab. A simple RMB click and "edit as super user" would be fab.

Re: feature - Neil Stevens - 2002-03-02

K menu -> System -> File Manager (super user mode) No, that's not exactly what you asked for, but it's something that's already there, for you to use now. The thing you've asked for needs to wait for 3.1. And, of course, if you expect to get it at all you need to file a wishlist bug report on http://bugs.kde.org/ like you're supposed to.

Re: feature - Hetfield - 2002-03-02

You can do this with one trick. 1. RMB on a Textfile and Edit File Type.. 2. Add a new Application "kdesu -c kwrite" 3. Now you can use this entry to open it with SU rights CU

Even better - Roberto Alsina - 2002-03-04

If you have the RAM: kdesu -c kfmclient openURL (Check it, I am not on KDE). That has the advantage of meaning "open with the default app as root". That way, you can, for example, listen to a wav as root ;-)

Re: Even better - cratos - 2003-02-06

When I run 'file manager - super user mode' or kdesu -c or anything like that the window opens up then closes really quickly. I tried to add & to run it in the background but it doesnt work. why does this happen? Especially the file manager, it is made to run not close! thanks

Re: Even better - cratos - 2003-02-06

ps my email is d_meehl@hotmail.com if you have an answer for me (please) =) thank you