KDE Developer's Corner: KAutoConfigDialog Tutorial

Sunday, 24 August 2003  |  Bmeyer

For developers waiting for all of the new goodies that KDE 3.2 will offer, here is a sneak peek at KAutoConfigDialog, in the form of a new tutorial added to the KDE Developer's Corner. KAutoConfigDialog is a class that allows a developer to easily create a configuration dialog for an application. It automatically synchronizes GUI widget values with values in the configuration file by matching keys and widgets of the same name. KAutoConfigDialog also manages the buttons in a normal configuration dialog along with many other features -- reducing duplicated code and manual work. For full details and screenshots check out the tutorial!

Comments:

Very Nice - MxCl - 2003-08-24

Seems extremely interesting. I look forward to trying it out for some of my apps come KDE 3.2 :) Configure dialogs aren't half tedious.

CVS digest alluded to this . . . - Turd Ferguson - 2003-08-24

From what I saw it reminds me of the windows registry editor :) This is not a flame, just an observation. It's cool though.

Re: CVS digest alluded to this . . . - manyoso - 2003-08-24

You're thinking of the KConf editor in CVS digest. This is something completely different. Yes, KConf is similar to GConf and the windows registry editor, but KControl is not going away. This however, is a new configure widget for developers. It really doesn't offer anything new to the end user besides consistancy, but it DOES make it much easier for developers to write configuration options.

Can't wait to use it! - Dominik Seichter - 2003-08-24

Thanks for this great tutorial. I cannot wait until I can use it in my own applications as it will really reduce their code size and therefore my work. KDE is really the coolest development framework available! This new class rocks! CU Dom

links - me - 2003-08-24

it is bad to link to the same site twice within the same paragraph! You're doing that very often, please don't. thanks!

Re: links - robrecht - 2003-08-24

I think this linking is ok because it is to 2 seperate things: the specific documentation and the general developer-site. Sure, they are on the same site, but clearly two seperate things. Suppose you only link the developer-site, then the user has to find the specific documentation the topic was talking about. Suppose you only link the documentation, then the user may not be aware that this documentation is part of a larger site about KDE-developer-information. Giving links to both is clearly an asset.

Re: links - André Somers - 2003-08-24

Well... the sneak peak and the tutorial links both reference the exact same URL... This _is_ double linking IMHO.

Re: Re: links - nonamenobody - 2003-08-25

>> Well... the sneak peak and the tutorial links both reference the exact same URL... This _is_ double linking IMHO. There are only two links, "sneak peek at KAutoConfigDialog" and "KDE Developer's Corner". The two links have different URL's. What is this 'tutorial' link that you refer to?

Re: Re: links - André Somers - 2003-08-25

At the moment I replied, the last word of the article, 'tutorial', was a link too, refering to the same URL as the sneak peak link.

Chess engine - Wurzelgeist - 2003-08-24

Will a KDE chess board be included in KDE 3.2 games package? I also get the impression that the graphics of the game package soemtimes look a little bit inconsistent. Will a Crystal look also be applied to the Game graphics, like card sets ecc.?

Re: Chess engine - AC - 2003-08-24

If someone writes it :)

Re: Chess engine - manyoso - 2003-08-24

Are you kidding?! Check out Knights... it's only the coolest chess software out there. http://knights.sourceforge.net/ Write to the developers and ask them to put it in KDE's CVS.

HOLY SHIT THIS ROCKS!!! - Alex - 2003-08-24

I just downloaded version 0.6 and this is by far the best chess game on Linux! This just has to go in CVS!!! It rocks! Try it out yourself: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31461&release_id=160924 Sure it's nowher enear as good as Chessmaster 9000, but its still awesome!

Re: HOLY SHIT THIS ROCKS!!! - Heini - 2003-08-24

And this "slibo" chess program?

Re: HOLY SHIT THIS ROCKS!!! - manyoso - 2003-08-24

I think Knights is much further along. Knights really is an amazing program.

Re: HOLY SHIT THIS ROCKS!!! - Alex - 2003-08-25

Bah, they really should merge the two programs.

Awesome!! - Mario - 2003-08-24

This program rocks, jsut tried it now and I downloaded the themepack too, it's absolutely stunning! The default, Winter or Blue Marble board theme with Nuts and Bolts, Penguins, Staunton Wood, or Symmetraced look sooo beautiful and it works great too. Only problem is using the crafty engine if I put the computer 3 bars more than weaker it starts lagging a bit. And that the computer difficulty setting is kind of obscure, it should be next to the computer opponet option, I shouldn't have to go to human and than computer to change the difficulty.

'tabs' - whatever - 2003-08-25

While this sounds nice, I was scared when I saw that screenshot: http://developer.kde.org/documentation/tutorials/kautoconfigdialog/configure.png Is that terrible 'sidebar' with icons ever going to go away from KDE? (or can it be changed to just be a row of tabs instead? without the (often non-Crystalized) icons?)

Re: 'tabs' - Ferdinand - 2003-08-25

IMHO a solution like in Controlcenter - View "Icon" oder "Tree" would do it.

Re: 'tabs' - whatever - 2003-08-25

No, that makes it a lot less user friendly. Just having tabs (or at least the choice to have them instead) would be nice..

Re: 'tabs' - Benjamin Meyer - 2003-08-25

Actually using KAutoConfigDialog a developer shouldn't normally specify which layout format to use. Thus every app that has multiple pages currently uses the sidebar format. But of course to change that one would only have to make a changed in one place and every single application would move. This makes for a much more consistant user interface. Currently that change is in the code, but I was thinking of down the line to making it a global kde configuration option. -Benjamin Meyer

Re: 'tabs' - anonymous - 2003-08-25

Thanks for this very useful class. This will reduce some serious amount of work and I think, using it as a way to make the layout format globaly configurable, is a pretty good idea, too.

Re: 'tabs' - MxCl - 2003-08-25

I don't know anybody else who feels that way about the sidebar icons. I much prefer them to tabs myself and it makes KDE stand out from other Desktop Environments which is also a good thing.

Re: 'tabs' - whatever - 2003-08-25

There are many other ways to make KDE stand out from other DE's: 1) faster/est widget toolkit (which Qt already is) 2) good programming interface (much better than Gtk/Gnome, but can still be greatly improved to be somewhat more professional) 3) consistent desktop (unfortunately, KDE is not the most consistent DE anymore, but it looks like things are improving lately) 4) having one option to rule them all, and not 20 options for doing the same in 20 different programs (KDE programs suffer badly from this, but looks like it's improving as well lately) 5) supporting all needed features to use GNU/Linux without touching a terminal (no DE on Linux does that atm) (about that last one, reallly.. try using Linux/KDE for a month without using a terminal/console at all, it won't work) And if you want icons, that's good, as long as I can have my tabs :) (using one _global_ desktop options of course, and not 40 options)

Re: 'tabs' - whatever - 2003-08-25

Oh and of course: 6) best programs (Bake Oven rulez, KMPlayer is cool, KDevelop rocks, etc)

Re: 'tabs' - David Johnson - 2003-08-25

"supporting all needed features to use GNU/Linux without touching a terminal" Next time you have to open up a terminal, stop and look at WHY you're opening it up. It will be one of two reasons: 1) system adminstration; or 2) accessing the full power and flexibility of the OS. In terms of system administration, if you don't want to touch the command line, do what thousands of companies across the world do, even with Windows: hire a sysadmin. Although it is possible to put sysadmin functionality in the desktop, the question I have to ask is "why?" And what good would a KDE frontend to the sendmail configuration do you if you run postfix instead? I'll backtrack a bit. Since with a stand-alone home system, you HAVE to be your own sysadmin, there are some things that should be on the desktop. The prime example is package management. But most of these things are already covered. The second reason was to access the full power and flexibility of the OS. This is something you never want to take away from the user. I dual boot WinXP and FreeBSD, and everytime I use Windows I feel like I have my hands tied behind my back. There are things you can do with the command line in UNIX that are simply unimaginable in Windows. Need to change a link in each of ten thousand html files? One or two lines in a terminal using grep and sed are all that you need, versus several hours of opening up each file one by one and editing manually.