In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: The "simple menu" (similar to the menu found in the KDE 3 series) becomes usable. The clock receives a popup-based calendar widget, with KRunner becoming multi-threaded in Plasma. Work continues the long-awaited update of KBugBuster, with important development milestones reached. Version Control and other general work in KDevelop. Start of a DirectShow (for Windows) backend for Phonon, and the integration of this backend in Amarok 2.0. Continued work on the BitTorrent plugin for KGet. KBlogger gets KWallet integration. The beginnings of a simple vector text shape with support for text-on-path and exact positioning, and the start of another painting framework in KOffice. A bitmap (BMP) export filter for Krita. Support for SVG animations in KDM. Important work on the KNewStuff2 framework, through the work of a new maintainer. Adjustments in colour schemes intended for KDE 4.0, more work on adapting icons to the FreeDesktop.org icon naming standard. Abakus, a calculator application, begins to be ported to KDE 4. KDE 4.0 Release Candidate 2 is tagged for release. Read the rest of the Digest here.
Comments
I wonder if anyone has planned to do a plasmoid for the kasbar of kde3 ?
I think you will be my hero !
By the way, I do not know how easy it could be to do that. Is there a data engine for providing those informations ?
Do you think that I (know only some bits of qt and nothing about kde) could implement a plasmoid when I will have time ?
What do you think about the skills needed ?
Thanks in advance and very good job for all kde devs
"Do you think that I (know only some bits of qt and nothing about kde) could implement a plasmoid when I will have time ?"
Some of the current Plasmoid devs had to prior experience even with Qt, so that puts you ahead of the game :) I say - go for it!
There is indeed a data engine that lists the tasks that should be showing up on a taskbar already, which could be re-used in a kasbar type taskbar. I'm not sure about some of the other things, like showing the thumbnails of the windows, which might require the creation of a thumbnail engine that queries kwin (or other window manager) for this information...
Cheers
How can I add the simple menu to the taskbar? Adding it to the desktop and moving it on the taskbar does not seem to work for me (svn from today).
right now you have to drag it directly from the add widget dialog to the panel. I have no idea if we will be able to drag plasmaoids from the desktop to the panel later. (i hope so, would be logic)
and functional. imagine adding an rss reader configured for 20 sites to your task bar, then adding it to the desktop. copying and pasting 20 URLs is a pain. but what is more important is this: you can't let an applet crash the desktop. it's happened to me in some of the recent builds. one of the applets was fixed almost immediately after I reported it, but that's not the point. the point is, if an applet crashes, it should crash alone. that's what Linux prides itself on, right? modularization, or something similar.
No you can't add it to the taskbar (at least the default one), but dragging from desktop to a _panel_ will be possible in the future. ;)
Both of your questions are answered here: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2007/12/birthing-plasmoids.html
I already read that blog post. and I wasn't talking about the default RSS reader, but a hypothetical one.
I was referring to your statement "if an applet crashes, it should crash alone", not the RSS widget.On the page I linked to (in the comments, sorry for not being clear about that) you can read:
"No, Plasmoids are all executed in process, so we will always have the situation where a buggy (native code) Plasmoid brings down the entire desktop. Plasmoids written in Javascript/ Python/ Ruby/ whatever are immune to this, though, and also have the advantage that they are significantly easier to download and install."
-- Anonymous
And
"the anonymous answer is correct; and the reason for things being in process is that out-of-process means a LOT more overhead (a LOT) and makes visual effects and harmony pretty much impossible. it also isn't a cure all for stability problems, as the systray can attest to."
-- Aaron J. Seigo
As for the question in the first post, the answer is also in the comments:
"> Will plasmoids eventually be draggable
> to/from the panels and desktop?
that's the idea."
-- Aaron J. Seigo
Once again, I apologize for not being clear in the first comment. :)
This may be quite offtopic, but: Does anyone know whether KPowersave is already being ported to KDE 4 (including, most notably, Solid)? I could imagine that KPowersave could automatically turn off desktop effects when in battery or powersaving mode, that would be very cool.
And preventing strigi to start a full indexing of harddrive, and replace the plasma animator with a simple one, and stoping wifi cards when network is down for more than one minute.
Yay, but I think we will have to wait.
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdelibs/solid/solid/powermanagement.h?vi...
SOLID_EXPORT bool appShouldConserveResources();
This is already present, but apps need to make use of it.
Thanks Danny for another riveting Commit Digest. I especially like the written features at the beginning of each digest where developers talk about and show how their work is progressing.
I have a suggestion for the panel. It looks beautiful and sleek at the moment, but the icons on the bottom bar are hard to distinguish in all the blackness. My idea is to have the tabs in inverted colors (image attached). What are your opinions on this? This ain't a biggie, but it's just a little thing that I suddenly though of.
The KDE 4 series looks more exciting and promising by the commit, great work guys!
Grr the attachment didn't work! Here it is (hopefully)
I hope not, that's real ugly :)
Well fair enough. It doesn't fit the overall theme very well, but I think that the current settings make the different windows on the panel a bit indistinguishable. So I've tried to provide a constructive suggestion. Still, this is such a minor niggle and I have great faith in the KDE team that I know there's nothing to worry about.