KC KDE #44 is Up

Kernel Cousin KDE is back! Issue #44 is now up, featuring everything from a summary of KMail developments to Qt GStreamer bindings, Kopete news and much more. Grab it here.

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Comments

by Richard (not verified)

Uh, I run antialiased fonts and they look just beautiful. They're a cinch to set up too... KDE supports them and all...

by mike ta (not verified)

Am I alone in the Universe, or does at least one other person think that Keramic is awful? The extra sized current-table is a waste of space, the combo boxes really suck, and the default button decoration looks like something produced by three year old who hasn't quite mastered the use of scissors yet?

by Echo6 (not verified)

no you are not the only one, there are 1 or 2 more :) Personaly I think it is cool.

by KDE User (not verified)

Agreed. But no big deal, because you're not forced to use it. I use the fantastic Hicolor KDE default in the 3.1 beta.

by Shamyl Zakariya (not verified)

Yes, I'm with you too. I can't bear keramic, for widgets or windows. But, that's why we have options, right? I happen to think light3 is the bee's knees.

My personal opinion is that we need a fast, light but very graphically high quality 2-D style, something like _Web_, but easier on the eyes. No bevels, no shadows. I was intending to write such a style when I wrote the kwin KMUltra decor a few months ago -- MKUltra was going to be the accompanying window style. But, too much *real* work to do ;)

by Peter (not verified)

Great work! Thanks for that. I'm really looking forward to the next XFree release. Is there already a timeframe for it?

by ik (not verified)

in the KC its said changing depth is also supported. that seems to be an error.

by Bluewolf (not verified)

Changing depth is allready supported by xfree, (don't know about the KControl plugin) and it has for a while. ALT-CTRL-+

by Janne (not verified)

"Changing depth is allready supported by xfree, (don't know about the KControl plugin) and it has for a while. ALT-CTRL-+"

Ummmmm, no. I believe that by "depth" he was referring to the color-palette (8/16/32bit). And the Alt-Ctrl-+/- doesn't change that. Heck, it doesn't even change the resolution! it changes the size of the displayed desktop, but it's not the same as changing resolution. For example, open windows are not scaled to the new resolution.

by Corba the Geek (not verified)

Not really.

CTRL_ALT_+ and CTRL_ALT_- are more like "zoom" functions. They change the physical resolution of the screen but do not change any other properties such as size of the desktop... So if you have a 1280x1024 desktop and hit CTRL_ALT_- until you get to 640x480 you are left with a small window on to your desktop in which everything is really large - large fonts, large window borders etc. If you move the mouse outside of the window the screen will scroll to show you a different part of the desktop.

It is really more like an "accessibilty" feature than anything provide by "Rotate and Resize".

by Hamish Rodda (not verified)

It was supported in earlier revisions for TinyX, but to get this to mainline they had to drop it...

by John Herdy (not verified)

First of all thanks for your great work on KDE. The physical screen setting is something that is important for KDE/Linux, because newbies have no idea how to configure X by hand. I hope you don't mind if I make two suggestions:
- add the 1280x960 to the available resolutions. 1280x960 is a 4x3-resolution (like 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, 1600x1200). You have 1280x1024 in your options which isn't a 4x3-resolution (but some people like it so it's good that it's available).
- add a color-bitrate-setting to the available options.

I saw on your screenshot that only 85 Hz is available in the "Refresh rate"-section. Is this a setting you can adjust or is this information about the current setting. If it's the latter I have to add a third suggestion to the list:
- add a refresh-rate-setting to the available options.

by Hamish Rodda (not verified)

No probs, I like smallish projects like this, and it's nice to get a mention on Slashdot ;) (though people say I wasn't first, they're wrong, I had this working (albeit with TinyX) in January - but it's a moot point anyway).

However you should understand that most of the work was done by Jim Gettys and others. The resolutions I can offer depend on what the driver supports; I just list them all. I had to use the vesa driver for development; the nvidia open source driver has a bug, and the binary driver doesn't work for me with the latest X cvs. So, if your card/driver can support it, it will be listed.

The pixel depth is not implemented in the X extension due to difficulties in implementation. If you need this, run TinyX/kdrive.

I also do my development on a laptop, so I can't change refresh rates ;) Again, if your card/monitor/driver supports it, you should be able to.

by David Bishop (not verified)

Well, that isn't quite how it works, as X is fantastic in supporting not only the "standard" resolutions, like 800x600, 1024x768, et. al, but also the weird ones, like 1152x864 (I have a fixed freq. monitor that only ran at that), or 800x400 (widescreen monitor, don't ask), or whatever else you can think of. Just try it! (Not on your laptop, of course ;-). What I'm saying is, have the "defaults" listed is wonderful, and definetly the right way to do it, but there is also a definite *need* for being able to manually enter the resolution. Might I suggest some sort of "Advanced" button?

Anyways, thanks for all the hard work.

D.A.Bishop

by Hamish Rodda (not verified)

The protocol doesn't allow entering just any dimensions :(

by Chakie (not verified)

Those shots sure look excellent, and I'm not talking themes or fonts here, but funtionality.

by Jiffy (not verified)

Is it just me, or does the popup have the left and right arrows backwards? Also, for flipping vertically and horizontally, I would recommend using an arrow with points on both ends (e.g. <--> flip horizontally).

by ac (not verified)

Er, this seems to be a common English translation issue, and it's on the screenshots:

"Anticlockwise" should be "Counterclockwise"

*It's possible that "anticlockwise" is a regional variation that I don't know about, but I've only heard this word spoken by Germans before, so I think some German/English dictionary somewhere is responsible for this word.

by Richard Moore (not verified)

Anti-clockwise is a very common english usage in.... England!

Rich.

by ac (not verified)

Thanks,

Dang. Next you're going to tell me I'm using the word "hopefully" wrong ;-)

Sorry to be an ugly American. I have seriously never heard the word spoken by a native English speaker. Won't happen again. Promise!

by Richard Moore (not verified)

Does anyone know if it is possible to use this extension to discover the current cursor pixmap? that would be useful for ksnapshot.

Rich.

by Tim Jansen (not verified)

... and for Desktop Sharing as well...

by Dave (not verified)

Can the new X extension support changing colour depth on the fly also? Seems a very bad move if not, like doing half a job.

by Tim Jansen (not verified)

Not yet, as far as I know. Changing the color depth is MUCH more difficult. Applications that are not prepared that the depth may change while the app is running, so the X server must emulate their old depth (yes, this also means that a application may become slower after changing the depth).

by Datschge (not verified)

Wouldn't that be quite "easy" to fix? Eg. a new QT version would have support for additional features and you'd only need to recompile your applications to use the newer QT version? I heard something like this is going to happen with xft2 and QT 3.1 (to be included in KDE 3.1).

by Tim Jansen (not verified)

Yes, but it wouldn't help for all those apps that don't use Qt. Every toolkit needs to be rewritten, and each app that uses native X11 calls. And each app that uses a statically linked toolkit needs to be rebuild (including a lot commercial, binary-only software).

by jsantos (not verified)

Well, If you want to go forward, you have to break some of the old stuff.
If QT can be adapted to depth changes, that means that all kde apps will work.
That is a lot.
Then you have gtk, it probably can be adapted quickly.
That leaves out about 20% of the apps only. If they become slower (in some cases) no big deal.
This reminds me of kernel developement. Kernel people don't care if binary drivers break because of a change. I think it is a good policy.

by Robert Smith (not verified)

http://tinyurl.com/253o some konqueror flamery.

by Stof (not verified)

http://slashdot.org/ some Nautilus flamery.
Relax, both camps are getting flamed...