This Month in SVN for June 2005

Friday, 24 June 2005  |  Jriddell

This Month in SVN is a new feature from Jes Hall covering the latest features in KDE's development version. The June edition covers the taskbar's new look, Kopete's new identities and Google Maps now working in Konqueror. "With 3.5 on the horizon and KDE4 work starting, KDE fans have a lot to look forward to."

Comments:

Good start - Bram Schoenmakers - 2005-06-24

For ordinary users, this is a much better report than Derek's SVN Commit Digest. This gives you a brief overview of 'what's hot' without the gory technical details inside. It would be a great idea for the localized groups, like we do now for the Application of the Month.

Re: Good start - koos - 2005-06-24

Damn, and what about really clumsy GUI users. Eg. I run SVN trunk from last week and my pager looks as boring a five years ago. So does the 'Configure desktop' config panel. I can't find another pager somewhere either (that is, I've looked in kdeaddons too)

Re: Good start - Amadeo - 2005-06-24

I run SVN trunk from yesterday, and I really like the new pager. Sorry, I did not get what you mean.

Re: Good start - blacksheep - 2005-06-24

Just wondering, a while ago I noticed from a friend of mine's desktop that Gnome pager supports drag'n drop of applications between environments. Does SVN pager support that as well? That was quite cool and actual useful. I also think KDE should use the virtual pages better. One suggestion that would make the experience of changing apps to other pages better: when holding a window and pressing the key to change page (ie. Ctrl+F2), the application should change page with the user. Also the option to show the panel when changing page should be 'on' by default and the text that shows up should be prettier like WindowMaker's. In the future, I also hope to see a 3D effect when changing pages. ;)

Re: Good start - Aaron J. Seigo - 2005-06-24

> supports drag'n drop of applications between environments. > Does SVN pager support that as well? perhaps you missed it in the article where it says: "Windows can now be dragged and dropped between desktops on the panel minipager itself."? you can also drag 'n drop from the taskbar to the pager. > the option to show the panel when changing page should be 'on' by default by "panel" do you mean kicker (that thing with the taskbar and kmenu)? if so, why? > text that shows up should be prettier like WindowMaker's yeah, that text isn't so pretty.

Re: Good start - blacksheep - 2005-06-25

You're right. The images are so impressive that I've skipped that block of text. Silly me. :P Drag'n drop from taskbar to pager sounds even more useful than the usual Gnome way. Can't wait to give that a try! About the suggest for having that on, it's just because I feel the user doesn't have a very good perception of when the page changes. The text only appears for a couple of seconds and isn't really that intuitive of what happen. Anyway, the panel thing is not that intuitive either, the right way to do it would be with a 3D rotation of the desktop, that I guess will be possible with a future Xorg release (I know there is already a hack for this, but it messes up with the refresh rate). Hope you liked my suggestion to make a window also switch page when user is holding it with a mouse click.

Re: Good start - Joachim - 2005-06-26

Perhaps you want to try 3ddesk: http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/

Re: Good start - blacksheep - 2005-06-27

Last time I tried it -- and it seems not to have been updated ever since -- it messed up with my display refresh rate. Besides, I'd like an integrated transition and a faster one, as well. It should also have some fast code for non-accelerated videocards. X.org extensions is the way to go.

Re: Good start - Bram Schoenmakers - 2005-06-24

To reply myself, I've already started a Dutch translation for our local community (www.kde.nl). Actually, I'd like to see this feature on every community website. I will propose this to the webmasters somewhat later on.

Re: Good start - Mark Williamson - 2005-06-24

Agreed! I like to browse the commit digest for cool stuff but it's even nicer to have the cool stuff pulled out and screenshotted for me :-)

Very nice ... - keber - 2005-06-24

Seems to be very useful addition to commit-digest. Short and comprehesive. Especially because of screeenshots. BTW, where is this week's commit-digest?

Re: Very nice ... - Anonymous - 2005-06-24

> where is this week's commit-digest? It will be published on Saturday? Last week there was none because of http://digested.blogspot.com/2005/06/misc.html

Re: Very nice ... - jos - 2005-06-24

Compliments, Jes! Very professional and pleasing. This is definitely good PR for KDE.

Excellent - LB - 2005-06-24

Very nice website!! Thanks! How about a RDF-feed?

Re: Excellent - oisch - 2005-06-24

Great to see such an effort. It gives the nontechnical community much better insights on what's happening. Rock on :)! Ah yeah... a feed would be cool btw :)

Very nice - Michaël Larouche - 2005-06-24

This is a great column, fast and elegant way to track latest changes in KDE SVN. :) And it's feel always special to see your newfound feature you developed mentionned. (Global Identity in Kopete) :D

SVN - Andre - 2005-06-24

Good, very good but the name SVN is crap. What does it stand for? Subversion? do KDE users have to understand what SVN is?

Re: SVN - Aaron J. Seigo - 2005-06-24

yes, svn == subversion.

Re: SVN - mikeyd - 2005-06-24

It's no more nonobvious than CVS, which is what it probably would have been called before.

Re: SVN - KDE User - 2005-06-24

Um, since when do KDE users have to read this? Those who care enough about the development of KDE will either know what subversion is, or will have the brains to find out.

Re: SVN - Reemi - 2005-06-24

But don't you agree that this is a great way of making non-tech savey users warm for the coming release? I like Derek's weekly digest, but in this version I'd be able to show it to my friends and the'll understand what will be changed in the future. My suggestion would be to call it something like 'kde feature preview'.

I want konqueror from svn!!! - fast_rizwaan - 2005-06-24

could you please advise me how do i get konqueror (only with required libs etc.) from svn. I could get kopete from svn http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Kopete%20SVN. is it possible to get konqueror from svn?

Re: I want konqueror from svn!!! - Anonymous - 2005-06-24

> is it possible to get konqueror from svn? Sure, install kdelibs+kdebase: http://developer.kde.org/source/anonsvn.html

Re: I want konqueror from svn!!! - Rajil Saraswat - 2005-06-24

Kopete from svn using the above docs gives me an error: kopete: symbol lookup error: kopete: undefined symbol: _ZTIN6Kopete2UI8ListView9ComponentE anything wrong here? Cheers, Rajil

Re: I want konqueror from svn!!! - Matt Rogers - 2005-06-24

Make sure that you've installed kopete correctly. If you installed to another location so you don't overwrite your previous Kopete, then make sure you've set KDEDIRS=/path/to/new/kopete and that your PATH contains /path/to/new/kopete/bin as well. Sometimes various other tweaks are required. Join the kopete developers in the #kopete channel on freenode for more assistance. Hope this helps, Matt

Great - mOrPhie - 2005-06-24

Wow, this is really great Jes. It's a bit more user-friendly than SVN-digest (understatement). ;-) The use of screenshots also make the column complete. Well done! :-)

Some gnomie found it - Blarus - 2005-06-24

A gnomie found this and make a blog from it: http://gnometux.blogspot.com/2005/06/special-k.html he laughs to KDE but he use a stupid environment HAHA

Re: Some gnomie found it - Aaron J. Seigo - 2005-06-25

well, i don't think he uses a stupid environment. not my environment of choice ;) but it's certainly not the worst choice he could make. and it's really nice to see that we're impressing some of those out there for whom KDE didn't previously resonate with, especially since it seems we're doing it without alienating our current user base. huzzah!

Re: Some gnomie found it - ac - 2005-06-25

Since they claim to have millions of users I started to worry. They are amongst us. So many aliens :)

Re: Some gnomie found it - Anonymous - 2005-06-25

Reading the blog it seems to be a newbie who gets excited about every small feature he discovers (screenshot utility, setting wallpaper by dragging image on desktop, command line applet, ...).

Big Thanks to Jes - David - 2005-06-25

This is a wonderful article, and very nice and neatly done. Derek's SVN digest is obviously still very important but this is a great way of qualitatively seeing what's happened in KDE development recently and picking out some highlights . I'm now totally motivated to spending some time on getting a SVN build up tomorrow. As for Google Maps; it's great that it is now working, but come on Google, allow for Konqueror will you instead of breaking it every time you do something?! We'd rather Konqueror didn't have to spoof as Mozilla or Firefox, and strictly speaking, no browser should have to do it.

Re: Big Thanks to Jes - blacksheep - 2005-06-26

Are you serious? GoogleMaps just makes use of JavaScript, that is not completely supported in Konqueror. Are they at fault? Of course not. Google even makes a available a non-JavaScript version of Gmail for browsers like Konqueror. They couldn't make the same thing for GoogleMaps obviously. And that comment about "spoofing as Mozilla or Firefox" is a complete non-sense. JavaScript is an ECMA standard and, as far as I know, Mozilla completely complies to it.

Re: Big Thanks to Jes - KDE User - 2005-06-26

You have no idea what you're talking about do you? Have you even looked at the Google Maps code?

Re: Big Thanks to Jes - ac - 2005-06-26

You didn't read http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1195 , did you?

Re: Big Thanks to Jes - blacksheep - 2005-06-27

No, I didn't. I have been told good things about the use of JavaScript by Google, so I didn't thought they used weird shit. Thx for the info. Hopefully, JavaScript 2.0 will end with the closed extensions, by providing support for packages.