This Month in SVN for August 2005

More KDE development news in the August edition of This Month in SVN. This issue packs in twice as much content as the previous one, with new features covered in Konqueror, Kicker, KDesktop, amaroK, Konversation and more: "This month has seen some drastic changes in SVN, with KDE4 development moved to trunk and KDE 3.5 gearing up for a stable release sometime after this year's KDE conference."

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Comments

by Bart Verwilst (not verified)

That last screenshot, of the media action thingy.. Could somebody send me that color scheme? :d Thanks ;)

by canllaith (not verified)

Sure =) It's made by a guy called Alethes in #kde

http://www.canllaith.org/foo/purple.kcsrc

by Bart Verwilst (not verified)

Hm, this doesn't seem to be exactly the same... :p Anyways, it's becoming a habit that a color scheme looks nice on a screenshot, but once you have it on your own system, it doesn't look so appealing anymore :(

by Anno v. Heimburg (not verified)

> Anyways, it's becoming a habit that a color scheme looks nice on a
> screenshot, but once you have it on your own system, it doesn't look so
> appealing anymore :(

Sounds like the grass on the other side of the fence...

by Andre Somers (not verified)

The news that Konqueror now passes the ACID 2 test deserves a way bigger announcement than just being mentioned in this article. This kind of news would do well in more media and could do a lot in terms of exposure. It would also underline the improved collaboration that is happening now with Apple, an issue that has been a source for many articles and opinions in the recent past.
However, when I looked on the Konqueror website, there is no mention at all of reaching this milestone.

by c (not verified)

ugh! wait till there's a stable release with it in, or you'll just wind people up.

by Hans (not verified)

Unlike all other webbrowsers you can't "just downlaod" konqueror and install it. You have to install the SVN version of kdelibs-3.5 (+ dependencies) and the SVN version of kdebase-3.5.

Unlike Mozilla/Firefox there are no nightly tar balls of konqueror which users could install on their system. So the news that the SVN version of Konqueror supports ACID2 has no direct benefit for users.

by Andre Somers (not verified)

Neither did it for Safari, but they still managed to get quite a bit of attention. I did notice though that I missed part of the buzz, as it seems I was on holiday during the first announcement in june.

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

Konqueror could still end up being the first browser that's released in a final version, that actually passes ACID 2 :)

Firefox doesn't and AFAIK, the upcomming 1.5 release wont either and Opera hasn't released a version that passes it either.

Are there any other browsers that passes it?

by cm (not verified)

The iCab browser does. See http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_06.html

Not sure if that version is already released though.

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

From the website: "The development of iCab is not fully finished yet. But the first beta release of the final version is already available."

by aile (not verified)

We need a kind of autopackage. I know that some do not like the current implementation but it is a must to get packages of applications run on every single distribution.

by Ivor Hewitt (not verified)

There have already been quite a few announcements of the konqueror acid2 pass actually... and in all it's quite a minor achievement when put in context with the amount of work that has gone into KDE3.5 as a whole.

by Anonymous (not verified)

> when I looked on the Konqueror website, there is no mention at all of reaching this milestone.

But http://khtml.info has.

by Bram Schoenmakers (not verified)

Well, Acid2 *was* working, it seems to be somewhat broken now (with a recent KHTML build).

by Dolio (not verified)

Yeah, I was wondering about that. I'm pretty sure I have a recent svn checkout from the 3.5 branch, and it doesn't seem to pass acid2. In place of the eyes I get an embedded frame with scrollbars and an unreachable host message. Is that a khtml problem or something wrong with the acid2 page?

Not that I think it's a big deal, but it'd be somewhat embarrassing to announce that it passes and release a version that doesn't pass.

by Bram Schoenmakers (not verified)

I don't assume that the Acid2 is changed in the meantime, just to screw our 'compatible' browser up ;)

No, the problem must be in KHTML. I hope it gets fixed before the release, because, as you said, it's a bit embarassing to say that Konqueror is Acid2 compliant now.

by canllaith (not verified)

How recent is this checkout? I'm looking at it here and it's just fine.

by Morty (not verified)

Checkout at the 18 does show the described error. An earlier on the 14 also fails, but with a rectangular stripe insted of the eyes(the 18 has this only in place of the left eye).

by Bram Schoenmakers (not verified)

===
bram@s040391 ~ $ ls -l /usr/kde/head/lib/libkhtml.so.4.2.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 bram users 45585969 Aug 15 21:07 /usr/kde/head/lib/libkhtml.so.4.2.0
===

So, its a couple of days old.

by Ivor Hewitt (not verified)

The problem isn't to do with any changes in the khtml codebase, but that the example.com domain that's supposed to return a 404 error is not responding.

If you add "www.example.com" to your hosts file and point it anywhere that returnds a 404 page for the request "www.example.com/404", then the face should render correctly.

Now the question is whether the fallback should work in the same manner for an unresolvable domain as it does for a 404 error. I expect it should, but just to clarify again the problem isn't a code change in khtml, but a change in the test environment.

Cheers,

by Janne (not verified)

I noticed in the last screenshot that is says "Always do that for this type of media". Wouldn't "Always do this for this type of media" sound better? Alhough some might complain about the "this... this".

P.S. Thanks for your work on informing of the changes in KDE. I find your articles to be very easy to read, and they give me very good idea what is going on with KDE-developement :).

by JohnFlux (not verified)

Also the media type is "unmounted cdrom". I really hope that we can one day have the user unaware if the cdrom is mounted or not. :/

by mabinogi (not verified)

I'm a user, and I happen to want to know whether it's mounted or not

by pholie (not verified)

yeah, i'd like to be intuitive for user, and fully working! it happens (with dbus and hal) often that i'm not able to eject nor unmount the cd. killing some processes in bash solves it, but average user must be disgusted by this. in win**ws they don't have problems like this, they need only to press eject button on cdrom

by dannya (not verified)

I agree - this little string has irritated me since I first saw it :)
I have managed to get it changed in SVN, thanks to ervin.

Danny

by thijs (not verified)

Could you not change it to just read the selected action where there is now the first "this". So for the example in the screenshot you would get:

"For this type of medium always open in a new window."

or if you selected the other option

"For this type of medium don't do anything."

I think that would be more explicit about the action that gets performed [*]. I think it would look more natural (if ever there was such a thing for a computer interface). I don't know whether that is easily done though, but who knows. I'll also take this opportunity to say that I love KDE, I use it when I'm on linux and really like the fact that KDE's interface gets a rethink / some polish. Keep up the good work!

[*] If KDE could find out what type of medium is getting inserted it would be even cooler if the message read: "When a CD gets inserted always show its contents in a new window." Or something to that effect.

by Thiago Macieira (not verified)

No, this isn't possible.

You can't connect sentences like that. It works in English, but you can be sure there will be at least one language where the compounded sentence doesn't make sense or is syntactically incorrect with the action name.

The other option would be to have the translators translate every possible sentence. There would be one leftover: the customised actions, created by the users and by the installed programs.

by thijs (not verified)

I was afraid of something like that. Would translating all these actions be a heck of lot more work? Probably, interesting problem though. Thanks for the reply :)

by roiem (not verified)

Wouldn't it only be a matter of translating "Only perform action X when a medium of type '%1' is inserted" along with every possible action? (There can't be that many actions that can be used in this dialog, or am I mistaken?)

by Nicolas Goutte (not verified)

If you have for example 10 actions and 10 types, you have already 100 strings to translate!

Have a nice day!

by Tom (not verified)

A really good edition, Jess, thanks :)

Can anyone explain how configurable the media notification thingummy is, though? I'm sure a lot of people would be pleased if there was some form of notification less obtrusive than the WinXP-style dialogue shown in "This month in SVN". I'd favour system tray icon with bubbles that allow you to perform the actions described by the dialogue... it gives you all the functionality but doesn't get in your way (so long as is quietly fades away).

by Illissius (not verified)

Yeah, that irks me as well. I ended up just going into kcontrol and manually setting 'do nothing' for every single medium type. Hopefully won't be any more added later on...
(still get an icon shown on the desktop)

by Andre Somers (not verified)

You can turn off that icon from the Control Center.
Simply right click on the desktop, choose Configure Desktop, go to the Behaviour section, and in the Device Icons tab, remove the check above the list (or modify for which devices you want an icon displayed).

by Illissius (not verified)

You misunderstand :)
Icon on the desktop is a good thing.

by Egon (not verified)

You're right, if there is something I hate about windows, it's that useless dialog that popups when an DVD is layed in, or a external-harddisk is connected. Is one of the reasons I disabled the autoplay option under windows.

If KDE is doing the same shit, than I hope there will be an option to disable it.

by Levente (not verified)

We're dealing with linux here. If there ain't no way of disabling/enabling things, the stuff wouldn't belong here, right ? And, on top of that, this is kde we're talking about :] :thumbsup:

by Bram Schoenmakers (not verified)

Egon: "You're right, if there is something I hate about windows, it's that useless dialog that popups when an DVD is layed in, or a external-harddisk is connected."

Unfortunately, Windows users think different, and they don't find that dialog "useless", as you say. My friend said that he doesn't put DVD's in his diskdrive just for nothing, he wants to watch them. The dialog offers him that opportunity. He finds such a dialog handy. And probably millions of people think the same.

Personally, I totally agree with you. I'm not among those "millions of people". :)

by LuckySandal (not verified)

Amen to that. A (highly configurable) bubble would be much less obtrusive, following the principles of APPEAL. I certainly won't be using the ugly huge XP-like dialog...

by Willie Sippel (not verified)

You mean similar to this one:
http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/to...

I really hope that one gets integrated (may need some more polish, but I like it). :-)

by Davide Ferrari (not verified)

I guess how could people get used to these system tray "bubbles", they are only a windows placebo for notifications. We have applets in kicker, they are more comfortable, usable and whatever and still people complains about an icon in the system tray that pops up a baloon. I don't understand why...

by mOrPhie (not verified)

Tnx again Jess! You did a really good job. :)

System Kioslave looks very promising. It is something I always missed in non-windows desktops. And finally, the icons-rearranging-bug is fixed. That asks for a party. ;)

by Alex (not verified)

"One of the most exciting things to happen in desktop & panel development this month is the fixing of a long standing and notorious bug. Bug 91575, 'Icons get rearranged on login' is the subject of one of the most frequently asked questions on mailing lists and IRC channels. This bug was caused by lack of proper communication between Kicker & Kdesktop and was recently fixed in a concerted effort between Aaron Seigo and Martin Koller. For everyone who has had their desktop icons rearranged on logging into KDE or on hiding and showing panels, this is finally fixed for 3.5!"

:) :-) :)

Thank you!

BTW: adding Applets also looks sweet: http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/images/test.gif

by fast_rizwaan (not verified)

I won't work with supermounted, that's a bug I presume. if I remove supermount in /etc/fstab (old cdrom mounting) then Media Detection works.

I love supermount and I want media manager support that too. Has anyone got Media Detection work with CDROM mounted with supermount?

by Davide Ferrari (not verified)

Supermount is crap. Pass to a project Utopia (udev+hal+dbus) solution if you want automatic (well, with KDE currently is semi-automatic) mounting of removable medias. Or use your distribution default.

by Fast_Rizwaan (not verified)

for you it may be crap, but I love supermount, it does what it is supposed to do - seamless CDROM access. Never had a problem.

I really hate to unmount, cause konqueror locks cdrom!

I have udev+hal+dbus installed and I am not satisfied with them! I still need to unmount my cdrom by Right-Clicking and really annoying thing is to find out where a konsole or konqueror is locked with /mnt/cdrom!

could you suggest a way to automatic mounting and especially *unmounting* like supermount with udev+hal+dbus or something. so that I could use my computer, not fight with it to get my work done.

by superstoned (not verified)

supermount is superior in what it does best - esp for cdrom's its usefull. but it simply would never end up in the kernel, as the kernel developers don't want a kernel-space tool for something userspace can do (hal and dbus can just be ru - installed and upgraded, while supermount has to be in the kernel). so it is better to improve dbus and hal, as these are kind'of long term solutions, instead of spending time on supermount....

by Ookaze (not verified)

You will have to abandon supermount like I have. I think Con Kolivas supported it, but now nobody no longer supports it since the 2.6.11 kernel. And if he can't, I can tell you not a lot of people will be able to. Worse thing being that everyone thinks it is crap.
Well, project Utopia works pretty well, except that udev changes often, and now does not support devfs anymore, so I will have to make some changes to my system again to go back to the old Linux way (even though I used devfs for years).

by MamiyaOtaru (not verified)

I recently dumped supermount and switched to ivman (with udev and hal). Does exactly what supermount did. Mounts CDs automatically when I put them in, and I can press the eject button whenever I want. The only apparent difference is that the drives now work with KDE's media:/ and that's hardly a negative :)

by fast_rizwaan (not verified)

instead of using supermount we can work with autofs/automount. today i've got autofs working in slackware.

you'd need to create "mkdir -p /mnt/.auto/cdrom /mnt/.auto/dvd"

and copy the auto.* to /etc as "cp auto* /etc"

and copy the "cp rc.autofs /etc/rc.d/rc.autofs"

also see:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Auto_mount_filesystems_(AUTOFS)#Config_files
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?postid=1149234

now who needs hal+dbus for cdroms or floppies?