Feed aggregator
Apple Ventura Dark Plasma 6 [Global Themes (Plasma 6)]
This week in KDE: a deluge of new features
The floodgates are fully open and developers have started landing juicy features for Plasma 6.1!
But not just that… we asked for bug reports and you folks gave us bug reports! Usually we get 30-50 per day, but now we’re up to 150-200. It’s kind of crazy.
Now, this doesn’t mean the software is actually really buggy. It means that people are using the software! Most of the bug reports actually not about KDE issues at all: graphics driver issues, bugs in themes, and bugs in 3rd-party apps. And many are duplicates of existing known issues, or really weird exotic issues only reproducible with specific combinations of off-by-default settings.
Of course some are more significant, but at this point I think we’ve got most of them fixed. There are still a couple open–such as slow login and black lock screens with certain setups–but both have open merge requests to fix them, so I expect those to be fixed pretty soon too.
New FeaturesYou can now split embedded terminal views in Kate horizontally or vertically (Akseli Lahtinen, Kate 24.05. Link)
You can now configure whether the magnifier in Spectacle’s Rectangular Region mode is always on, always off, or only on while holding down the Shift key (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.05. Link)
There are now “edge barrier” and “corner barrier” features when you’ve using a multi-screen setup. These barriers add virtual spacing between screens, so that it’s easier for you to click on the pixels touching shared screen edges. Why would you want to do this? For example to make auto-hide panels between screens possible, and to make it easy to click the close button of a maximized window with another screen next to it. Note that these features are Wayland-only. And yes, you can turn these features off if you don’t like them, and also adjust the size of the barrier’s virtual space (Yifan Zhu, Plasma 6.1):
You can now hide the Web Browser widget’s navigation bar, making it suitable for cases where it’s simply monitoring the same web page you never navigate away from (Shubham Arora, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Manual session saving now works on Wayland. Note that until real session restore is added, this will be hooking into the “real fake session restore” feature I blogged about a few weeks ago (David Edmundson, Plasma 6.1. Link)
UI ImprovementsWhen you have Spectacle configured to not take a screenshot when launched, the window that appears on launch now gives you the opportunity to take a screen recording too (Noah Davis, 24.05. Link)
Search results for pages in System Settings now better prioritize exact name matches (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 6.0.1. Link)
Using a keyboard shortcut to activate the Calculator widget on a Panel now passes focus to it correctly so you can start typing to calculate things immediately (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
When using the Kicker Application Menu launcher, you can now do calculation and unit conversion, and find the power and session actions by searching for them (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1. Link)
The new “Shake cursor to find it” effect is now enabled by default (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 6.1. Link)
The new Printers page in System Settings now does a better job of helping you figure out what to do next when it finds a driverless network printer that doesn’t have the right drivers installed (yes, that sounds like a contradiction, but such is life) (Mike Noe, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Panel widgets’ popups now close when you click on an empty area of the Task Manager (David Edmundson, Plasma 6.1. Link)
By default, XWayland apps are now allowed to listen for non-alphanumeric keypresses, and shortcuts using modifier keys. This lets any global shortcut features they may have work with no user intervention required, while still not allowing arbitrary listening for alphanumeric keypresses which could potentially be used maliciously (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Bluetooth connection failures are now additionally mentioned in the widget pop-up itself, right next to the thing you clicked on to try the connection which is where your eyeballs were probably still looking (Patrik Fábián, Plasma 6.1. Link)
The width of the clipboard history popup that appears when you press Meta+V now has a width that’s capped at a lower, more sane level when you’re using an ultrawide screen (Dominique Hummel, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Bug FixesGwenview no longer crashes when opening certain FITS image files (Albert Astals Cid, Gwenview 24.02.1. Link)
Minimizing a Dolphin window no longer causes all of its panels to get hidden (Nicolas Fella, Dolphin 24.02.1. Link)
Fixed a glitch with multi-line text selection in Okular (Okular 24.02.1. Link)
While dragging a file in Dolphin, if it happens to pass over other files and linger there for a bit, the other files no longer get immediately opened (Akseli Lahtinen, Dolphin 24.05. Link)
Plasma no longer crashes when you open Kickoff or Kicker while uninstalling an app that’s in the Favorites list (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.0.1. Link)
Launching/activating items with the Enter key in the Kicker Application Menu once again works (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.0.1. Link)
“Get [app name]” search results from KRunner once again work (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 6.0.1. Link)
Fixed a regression with System Tray icon support that caused some apps’ tray icons to show the wrong icon (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 6.0.1. Link)
When you drag multiple files from Dolphin onto the desktop, they no longer stack on top of one another until Plasma is restarted (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.0.1. Link)
Discover no longer crashes when you search for various fairly common terms, including “libreoffice” (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
Fixed the “Move to Desktop > All Desktops” titlebar menu item on X11 (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
Fixed a case where Plasma could exit (not crash) with a Wayland protocol error after turning screens off and back on again (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
Fixed a case where KWin could crash when a window was opened on a secondary screen plugged into a secondary GPU (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
Our previous fix for VLC and MPV not being able to go full screen turned out not to be enough, so we beefed it up, and now it should actually always work (Łukasz Patron, Plasma 6.0.2. Link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a bug that could cause Night Color to not work on systems with certain graphics hardware (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
The first search result in the Kicker Application Menu is no longer sometimes covered up by the search field (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
When you drag a window off the left side of the screen on X11, the cursor no longer moves unexpectedly (Yifan Zhu, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
Setting your system language to “C” on System Settings’ Region & Language page no longer mangles the text of the previews for individual formats (Han Young, Plasma 6.0.2. Link)
Fixed a case where Discover could crash on launch when its Flatpak backend is active (David Redondo, Plasma 6.1. Link)
When you have a Panel at the top of the screen, showing its config dialog no longer overlaps the global Edit Mode Toolbar; instead, the toolbar jumps down to the bottom of the screen where there’s plenty of space for it (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 6.1. Link)
Downloading items in the “Get New [thing]” dialogs that only have a single file available once again works (Akseli Lahtinen, Frameworks 6.1. Link)
Various actions throughout KDE apps that open the default terminal app–such as Dolphin’s “Open Terminal Here” menu item–once again work (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 6.1. Link)
“Horizontal bars” graphs in various System Monitor widgets now use the right colors (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 6.1. Link)
Menu items in context menus for text fields in QtQuick-based apps are now translated (Evgeny Chesnokov, Frameworks 6.1. Link)
Made a bunch of places icons in the Breeze icon theme respect the accent color, just like their compatriots (Someone going by the pseudonym “leia uwu”, Frameworks 6.1. Link)
Other bug information of note:
- 2 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 3 last week). Current list of bugs
- 36 15-minute Plasma bugs (3 more than last week). Current list of bugs
- 173 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over last week. Full list of bugs
Fixed a source of lag and frame drops on some systems with certain graphics hardware (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.0.1. Link)
Automation & SystematizationWrote a tutorial for how to set up automatic publishing of your KDE app to KDE’s F-Droid repository (Ingo Klöcker, Link)
Updated the tutorial for how to write a System Settings page (KCM) to reflect modernity (Akseli Lahtinen, Link)
Added an autotest ensuring that a special feature of KConfig and desktops files works (David Faure, Link)
…And Everything ElseThis blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.
How You Can HelpPlease help with bug triage! The Bugzilla volumes are extraordinary right now and we are overwhelmed. I’ll be doing another blog post on this tomorrow; for now, if you’re interested, read this.
Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!
As a final reminder, 99.9% of KDE runs on labor that KDE e.V. didn’t pay for. If you’d like to help change that, consider donating today!
Skull Splashscreen [Plasma Splashscreens]
Krita Monthly Update – Edition 13
Welcome to all krita artists, this monthly zine is curated for you by the Krita-promo team.
Development report-
Changes to KDE Binary Factory - Krita Next and Krita Plus builds
Nightly builds for Windows and Linux have been moved to GitLab. Binary Factory is now decommissioned. Due to this change the nightly build service is temporarily discontinued. The developers are working on getting the build up again.
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New Krita website is released.
The work for the new website was ongoing for some time so we are glad to announce that it is live now. The new website offers a light and dark theme. It is cleaner and the translation to other languages is much easier now. We are always working to improve the website so if you find any rough edges please let us know.
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Internal Roadmap for Krita
The developers had an online meeting on 26th February to discuss the future path for Krita development. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post here for more details about this meeting. In the meantime, enjoy these meeting highlights. The agenda for the meeting was:
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How to handle social networks and having a social media strategy.
Krita’s social media presence was handled by the developers earlier, but since they are busy with Krita’s development, we can request volunteers to help us. Krita-Artists group of volunteers can be asked to handle social media posting and any volunteers are welcome to join the group.
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Challenges and feasibility of keeping the support for Android version.
The person who was handling the support for the Android version has gotten busy with life so currently there is no one to look after it. The builds are also stopped due to our build server getting decommissioned. Dmitry is looking into the automated build issue but the team needs a way to keep the support up. There may be close to 500,000 users of Krita on this platform. Volunteers are more than welcome to join us in this endeavour.
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Various other aspects related to development
- The developers discussed some features that can be implemented such as audio waveform support in the animation timeline and the future path for creating a mobile UI.
- A Strategy for porting Krita to the next version of Qt (Qt is the underlying base that is used to build Krita).
- Areas where GPU computation can help. Artists who joined the meeting said that filters and transform masks were slow in krita. Our Liquify tool also needs a performance boost. So GPU utilisation in this area is welcome.
- Tiar will be investigating how to do AI assisted Inking. Disclaimer - this doesn’t mean we will be using the popular AI models out there. We intend to do this ethically and as this is still in the initial investigation stage, the developers are still discussing various aspect about how to approach this subject.
- How to handle PS style clipping mask - Deif Lou has done an awesome job in researching and investigating the clipping mask, layer effects and blending mode technicalities. The team intends to look into this and tackle this feature together.
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New features that got merged this month
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Close Gap in fill tool is finally here!
YRH created a gap-closing patch for the fill tool and that patch has been accepted to master. In this post, YRH points out that Dmitry and Krita users on this forum were instrumental in getting this done. You can read these latest comments and get the test builds from this post.
There should have been a video here but your browser does not seem to support it. (Video created by David Revoy)
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Text tool on-canvas basic rich text editing
Wolthera has been busy with text tool for some time now. You can tell by the text tool update thread that she is merging really exciting things one after the other. This month, Krita got support for on-canvas text editing with basic rich text support. As kaichi1342 reports on the forum, currently common shortcuts like Ctrl B, I, U for bold italics and underline are working, full and partial color change of text works on canvas.
There should have been a video here but your browser does not seem to support it. (Video created by Wolthera)
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Docker support added to popup palette
Freyalupen implemented docker support in the right click popup palette which can be of immense help for people who work on minimal canvas-only mode or for people using Krita on tablets. You can now use various dockers like the layer docker, brush preset history, etc., right from the right click popup palette.
There should have been a video here but your browser does not seem to support it. (Video created by freyalupen)
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Krita-Artists’ Monthly Art Challenge is a great way to stretch your skills and learn more about Krita.
February’s Art Challenge theme was Architectural/Urban, designed by Elixiah. We had a full slate of submissions to vote on at the end of the month. Mythmaker won the challenge with this image:
The challenge for this month is Marvellous Metal. Why not join in? It’s a friendly competition where we even share tips and help each other with challenge submissions on the WIP thread.
The Krita YouTube channel has reached 80,000 subscribers. That’s a gain of 17,000 subs in just over a year. Ramon’s most recent video, 5.2.2 New Features, has already had more than 86,000 views over the last month.
Great news: Members Hall and the nomination process is now open to all Krita-Artists members. Everyone has the opportunity to nominate artwork for the featured gallery. Monthly submission threads will open on the 15th of each month. We’ll use your submissions to create a poll which will determine the top four. The winning images will be added to the featured gallery.
The current instructions and submission thread explains everything you need to know in order to nominate artwork that you feel represents the best of Krita-Artists. In January, we’ll create an annual poll to vote for the very best from 2024.
Noteworthy pluginShortcut Composer v1.5.0 Released (this update requires Krita 5.2.2 or higher)
Highlights of new features:
- New action: Rotate brush which rotates the brush tip of the current preset
- New action: Rotate canvas
- Tooltips with additional info that appear when hovering over settings
From David Revoy: Grayscale to Color – Character Design “A commented step-by-step guide and advice on how to paint an original fantasy character design from scratch in Krita.”
This section has been compiled by [freyalupen]. (Feb 5 - Mar 5, 2024)
Stable branch (5.2.2+): Bugfixes:
- [Animation] Fix framerate resetting to 24 after adding audio or reopening the animation. (BUG:481388) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
- [Animation] Fix drawing on a paused animation to draw on the shown frame and without visual glitches. (BUG:481244) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
- [Animation] Fix added hold frames stopping playback until cache gets updated. (BUG:481099) (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
- [Assistant Tool] Small fixes for snapping on stroke start and other Assistant issues. (merge request, Mathias Wein)
Stable branch (5.2.2+) backports from Unstable: Bugfixes:
- Backport several older fixes from the 5.3 branch to the 5.2 branch, after they've had time to be tested for stability. This includes many fixes related to animation and/or transformation (BUG:475385, BUG:475334, BUG:444791, BUG:456731, BUG:476317, BUG:478966, BUG:478448, BUG:479664, BUG:475745), but also fixes to colorize mask (BUG:475927), adjustment layers (BUG:473853), canvas inputs (BUG:451424), colorpicking from labelled layers (BUG:471896, BUG:472700), and the ability to use the Wave filter as a mask (BUG:476033). (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha): Features:
- [Text Tool] Implement basic rich text editing in the on-canvas text tool. This includes changing the color with the color selectors, setting bold/italic/underline with keyboard shortcuts, and rich text copy/paste. (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
- [Fill Tool] Implement 'Close Gap' option in the Fill Tool and Contiguous Selection Tool. This allows the unleaked filling of gapped lineart by treating gaps of a configured size as if they were closed. (merge request, Maciej Jesionowski)
- [Popup Palette, Dockers] Add ability to show dockers, such as the Layers docker, in the Popup Palette's side panel. The On-Canvas Brush Editor that was in this panel is now a docker. (merge request, Freya Lupen)
- [Brush Engines] Add Photoshop-like brush texturing modes where Strength affects the texture instead of the dab, enabled with the 'Soft texturing' checkbox in the brush Pattern Options. (merge request, Deif Lou)
- [File Formats: JPEG-XL] Update libjxl and add options to export JPEG-XL with CICP profile and lossless alpha. (merge request, Rasyuqa A H (Kampidh))
- [Grids and Guides Docker] Add button to delete all guides. (merge request, reinold rojas)
- [Animation: Onion Skins Docker] Add Reset option for Onion Skins' opacity in a right-click menu, to reset them to the default values. (WISHBUG:466977) (commit, Emmet O'Neill)
Bugfixes:
- [Assistant Tool] Re-enable assistant preview for the eclipse, rectangle, polygon, and polyline tools. (merge request, reinold rojas)
- [Layer Stack] Fix a bug which emitted a warning on undoing flattening a group. (BUG:474122) (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
These changes are made available for testing in the latest development builds:
- Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.2+): Pipeline List | Download Latest: Linux - Windows
- Unstable "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha): Pipeline List | Download Latest: Linux - Windows
(macOS and Android builds will be available in the future.)
Ways to help KritaKrita is a Free and Open Source application, mostly developed by an international team of enthusiastic volunteers. Donations from Krita users to support maintenance and development is appreciated. Join the Development Fund with a monthly donation. Or make a one-time donation here.
