In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Custom legend entries and the beginnings of the Mercator map projection (and evidence of exciting other things to come) in Marble. Support for multiple online dictionaries and the start of a vocabulary Plasma applet in Parley. Kross scripting engines (supporting various scripting languages) in Plasma, and the much-anticipated return of the ability to resize the panel. Support for multiple "Picture of the Day" providers in the "Picture Frame" Plasma applet. More work on the redesign (code and visuals) of KWorldClock. Work on theming improvements across KDE games. Image information now displayed in fullscreen mode in Gwenview. Continued maintenance work in the Kooka scanning application. Support for HTML signatures in KMail. Continued development on the IRC Kopete plugin. Work on snap guides and a threaded tile backend in KOffice. A migration plugin for Sybase ASE in Kexi. Various efficiency improvements in KLinkStatus, KGet, and some KDE games. KDE 4.0.1 (bugfixes) is tagged for release. Read the rest of the Digest here.
Comments
I guess we're not too far away from the "search all pictures received from user X and tagged funny" or "select all pdf downloaded from website Y" (that one would need some work from kget or khtml I guess) ?
Very cool anyway.
The ability to have smart folders in dolphin would also be cool.
Smart Folders are folders which contain links to files of a certain search query eg. all *.odp files. Its really handy and with nepomuk there would be many catehories to search through.
Nepomuk has been HUGELY undersold, imho. It's based on RDF ontologies (ie, a very simple, but flexible and powerful database of knowledge), which essentially makes it the core of an AI engine. Theoretically, it should be possible to store ANY knowledge in it, and to ask any question. Some complex questions might not be answered as efficiently as others, as they'd resemble complex SQL queries. However, given that other systems might not do what you want at all, the imperfect solution is still better than lack of a solution.
> Nepomuk has been HUGELY undersold, imho.
I think one important lesson from development leading up to KDE 4.0 is that it is best to keep mum until there is something cool to show.
Sure, the semantic desktop does have a lot of potential, but right now, as far as the end user is concerned, it gives them simple tagging and rating of files in Dolphin.
Pitching to the developers is a different story. You want to get them fired up about the potential of a particular project and encourage them to use it to improve their own software. The difficulty is making sure that a pitch to developers or potential developers doesn't land on the front page of Slashdot as a promise that KDE version X will do Y.
Yep, agreed. It's a tough balance to find. Nepomuk's APIs have a really nice simplicity to them though, so I'm confident that development will catch up soon enough :) One thing that would really help though, is better documentation. The examples on techbase are great, but there aren't many of them, and they're fairly limited in terms of use cases. I haven't yet seen any examples of soprano/nepomuk use from python/ruby/kross -- don't even know if any of those bindings are implemented yet.
Is there some thinking on how to migrate NEPOMUK data?
Data that is automatically scraped from files or email messages is one thing; you can just redo the scaping. But the other type of data is that which cannot be recreated if the database is lost; for instance user entered tags, and the history of files (where they came from).
For me at least, I would neither manually enter any tags if they will be lost when I switch machines, nor would I make myself dependent on such metadata that cannot be synchronized or at least migrated between machines. Also, I would like control over the synchronization/migration process; I might not want the metadata for my private stuff on my work machine.
Any plan for this? Of course, a prerequisite is that files etc. are primarily identified by checksums rather than paths, which I am assuming to be the case?
Thanks in advance for any info!
There's a command line tool, sopranocmd, which you can query for anything related to a particular file. Tools like star (a modern tar replacement) have long-since supported file attributes. Patching star (or KDE's ark) to support asking Nepomuk/soprano for this data before archiving shouldn't be too hard at all. Worst case scenario, you can manually run the query, save it along with your files, and import it on a new machine. But there's really no excuse for archivers not supporting this stuff as standard. File attributes have been around for AGES in the unix world, and star has no issue with it. They also work fine on other platforms like BeOS, Mac OS, etc.
Forgive me for repeating this comment from another dot article, but all the replies were about QT, and I never got a reply about Domino. The original author didn't appear to update Domino, and it has been a few years.
Will some kind soul port over Domino to KDE 4? Maybe even somewhat of a cross breed between Oxygen and Domino? And these two improvements to Domino?
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Domino+menu+hack+for+Beryl+shadows?...
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Domino+Mockup?content=72412
> about QT
You write it Qt and pronounce it cute, not QT.
Thanks. I always assumed it was pronounced with a long e at the end, such as saying the letters Q-T.
Nope, that is a multimedia framework by a certain fruity company :)
snob
I disagree. This piece of info has to be posted sometimes so that people know. Lately the (QT)/(Qt) ratio has been way too high in dot postings...
Maybe if you are native english speaker. In swedish I pronounce it "Q-T" (but in swedish of course), there is no such word as "cute" in swedish. An alternative could be "kut" which is a baby seal.
"Maybe if you are native english speaker"
I believe you'll find far more German and Norwegian influences in its name than English.
"there is no such word as "cute" in swedish"
There's no such words as "Peppe" and "Bergqvist" in English. Would you like me to call you "Pepper Burger"? Seriously, "Cute" is how it's pronounced no matter what your native language is. That doesn't get translated.
Well, actually, despite my comment above, I often pronounce it "q-t" as well. This is so people understand what I'm talking about without additional explanation. Saying "cute" just gives me strange looks. And the reason for that is that many people only ever saw it in writing. This discussion might add to the number of people who know how to pronounce it though!
"Well, actually, despite my comment above, I often pronounce it "q-t" as well."
When I first started promoting Qt to business people years ago, I tried using "cute" and got dismissed out of hand after the initial derisive chuckles. When I started calling it "queue tee", I started grabbing people's attention. It's hard to make people take something new (to them) seriously when it has a comical name.
"Seriously, 'Cute¨' is how it's pronounced no matter what your native language is. That doesn't get translated."
So you don't translate words/abbrivations in to your own language? That is just silly.. I don´t prononuce Linux the way that americans do but more close to how Linus Torvalds pronounces it, http://suseroot.com/about-suse-linux/how-do-you-pronounce-linux.php
If I would follow your example then you would have to learn how "Peppe Bergqvist" is pronounced in swedish even if you would use that name in a normal conversation in english. So no more localizations of any word, is that your point?
Names (proper nouns) are rarely translated. For instance, if I meet someone from a Spanish/Latin country named Jesus, I don't pronounce it 'Jesus' as it would be in English, I pronounce it 'hey-zus' (going for phonetical here) which is what it sounds like in their language.
Q-Tee
" An alternative could be "kut" which is a baby seal."
Well, it is a female organ in Dutch :o)
Mrs Hammond?
Bwahahahahaha!!!
Laugh of the day. Thanks. :-)
Sure, a lot of good stuff needs porting. Might as well quit repeating it ;)
Domino's author works on Oxygen now, and for anyone else porting Domino is a matter of motivation. As is porting any other part of kde3.
I was expecting to see a lot of themes/styles ported to KDE 4 and some hot new ones but that's not the case unfortunately. For the exception of Bespin which is very nice but still not finished.
I thought the Bespin code is largely the old Oxygen code that was rejected for poor performance, and for being a mess. If my choices are Oxygen and Bespin, I'll wait for more options. Oxygen is decent, but my hopes were set high with Pinheiro's incredible mockups.
No, those aren't the only options. I have ported Bluecurve:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Quarticurve?content=59884
This is packaged in Fedora as qt4-theme-quarticurve.
A port of the Bluecurve KWin theme is also available:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Quarticurve-KWin+(for+KDE+3.96+)?content=59972
This is packaged in Fedora as quarticurve-kwin-theme.
QtCurve (with a kwin decoration): http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/?content=40492
Polyester: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/?content=27968
I actually like Qtcurve and Polester but I haven't tried Polester on KDE 4 as yet (I will try it later today). Anyway my favorite KDE 3.5x theme was Baghira which I still use. I like Bespin because it has a little reseblance to Baghira. I am still hoping to see some fresh, new and excited themes though. New KDE, new themes ;)
Please do make more classic themes for KDE4. I personally think that no matter how great the new UI is, there should always be a "make things look like the previous release" option for loyal users who liked the old theme. Especially since KDE4 is now much more customizable, this shouldn't be too hard.
My favorite widget and Kwin themes are: Karamik and Plastik
Ideally a KDE3 theme converter (so they all just work) or some instructions for contributors (I couldn't find any instructions on how to do a manual conversion myself) would be most appreciated.
Finally, dashboard widgets that more closely mimic the KDE3 K-Menu and panel would also be nice. Ideally all of this tied together with some default KDE4 classic theme option.
I don't know how good the code is but I am using Bespin for quite a while now and the performance seems to be quite good. Apart from that I like the subtle effects when one hover over the icons with the mouse and the dark menu background fits the KDE 4.0 desktop quite well but it seems to be somewhat half finished, something is still missing.
What's the present status of Pinheiro's work? Including Raptor?
I'm not very pleased about this fix:
> Kickoff should start from the top level menu (and favorites)
> Bug 155377: Kickoff should start from the top level menu (and favorites)
actually I liked this behaviour, especially when browsing and exploring for example all the games.
This was for me the big usability improvement over the old style menu.
Probably one could make this configurable...
Maybe just create a bugreport for it? :)
Thanks, Edwin!!
Is there any hope that we will be able to reply to html mails without destroying completely the original message format? At least preserving the indentation, linebreaks, color/bold... would be good start.
May I, with all respect for the good work and the priorities of the developers, ask if there are any plans to reintroduce the Mac OS style menu bar? I asked for that a while ago and Lubos Lunak generously offered to work on that somewhen post-4.0.
Are there any news on that?
I use the Mac style menu too. Please reintroduce it.
The option is actually still there in kdeglobals rc file.
You have to add these two lines to have the toplevel menu.
[KDE]
macStyle=true
The feature is currently quite buggy, however: often the menubar is not refreshed, and obviously the panel integration is missing... or should it be plasmoid integration?
I miss it too, by the way. But so does Lubos, I think so there is still hope :)
I see.
Thanks for the hint!
Why not? I like the idea.
Let's also make a Plasmoid that looks like OS-X Leopard dock, Gnome panel, and OS-X like Menu bar.
Long live customization!!! :-)
yes i NEED this, and hopefully there will be a better fix available for GTK apps to support this; thats one thing i really hate about non-kde apps. but hey, i hardly use anythnig thats non-kde anyways
Hello,
I'd like to thank those distributions who back port the KDE 4.1 changes most missed from 4.0 already, specifically Riddel and Kubuntu.
Yours,
Kay
+1 person missin backports in kubuntu :-(
Another one here... what has been backported to kubuntu?
Just updated mine kubuntu, didn't knew they had backported :D
Just a few things, like multiple lines in taskbar and more buttons in the plasmoids (actually I thing they should only show those when user click in the plasmoid, not just passing the mouse over).
If resizing the panel is possible, I didn't found how.
There are yet plenty of bugs, most annoyings to be is double-click not working in desktop icons and system tray not always showing icon app (sometimes it just.. don't). I would recomend waiting for 4.0.3 or 4.1.
My most annoying missing feature: bluetooth support missing in Dolphin :)
You saying that kubuntu's kde4 packages contain or will soon contain backports, especially the resizable panel?
That'd be awesome!
it has already, do an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
Ah, you've to install plasma-playground for the resizable panel?
Doesn't work at the moment, because some dependency on my system is broken, but nonetheless i like the backporting thing.
Meh, seems not my system to be broken, but the current kubuntu... it says:
dpkg: error with /var/cache/.../plasma-playground...deb (--unpack)
trying to overwrite /usr/lib/kde4/lib/kde4/plasma_applet_battery.so, wich is also in paket libplasma1
dpkg-deb: subprocess killed with signal broken pipe
I hope, JRiddell can work it out...
OpenSUSE have also done a number of backports for their packages ... nice to see.
today in our plasma meeting we discussed getting these backports actually into the 4.x branch. looks like we (plasma team) will be doing a set of backports for 4.0.2 and another for 4.0.3