KDE Commit-Digest for 27th January 2008

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Heavy refactoring and work on merging translation branches in Lokalize (which is renamed from "Kaider", and moved from playground to kdesdk). Work on a question editor in KEduca. Work on real-time cloud imagery in Marble. An initial implementation of a new undo stack in KWordQuiz. The start of a KAlgebra, Rot13, KWorldClock, and Pastebin Plasma applet, with the inclusion of more functionality from KDE 3.5 (such as the multi-row taskbar panel) in Plasma. Progress in scripting support and functionality in Plasma. The "Now Playing" data engine and applet, and the fuzzy-clock Plasma applet move into kdereview. Viewports support declared "complete" on the KDE desktop. "FlipSwitch" window-switching effect in KWin. The start of a KIO slave for handling arbitrary NEPOMUK resources. Draft implementation of a KABC resource based on Akonadi. Wholesale merges from the enterprise branch of KDE-PIM back into the main KDE branch. Move to complete support for the MPRIS media player interaction standard, and support for Video CD's and Audio CD's in Dragon Player. Dragon Player moves from kdereview into kdemultimedia for KDE 4.1. Last.fm streaming radio now works in Amarok 2. Work on gradient editing in Karbon. The Kooka scanning application finds a new maintainer, with various initial improvements. KSystemLog moves from playground into kdereview. Krone, a simple expense manager for KDE 4, is added to KDE SVN. Read the rest of the Digest here.

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Comments

by Peter Penz (not verified)

> Don't get me wrong, but isn't fixing A LOT of bugs more important
> than implementing new functionality to apps?

A lot of KDE developers have spend months before KDE 4.0.0 only with fixing bugs. This is important but also can get quite frustrating and is really far from being fun. Starting implementing some features for 4.1 is important for the motivation of developers and does not mean that no bugs are fixed in parallel. E. g. currently I spend around 30 % of my time for new features/improvements and the rest for bug fixing in Dolphin. The feature freeze for KDE 4.1 is at the end of March, so it's important getting the rough design for features fixed until this milestone.

by mkrs (not verified)

Alright, but don't you have a feeling that a new version will be the one in which you remove only some of the old bugs and add a lot of new ones?

You see, the problem is that even the fanciest app is frustrating when it's buggy. Please don't forget that the most important thing about any computer program is usability. Without it, a program is worth nothing more than a wallpaper - maybe it looks great, but you get no benefit from using it if it hangs every 20 minutes, just like KDE 4.0.0 does on my computer (which is quite new and the computer itself is not a source of this problem). It's your free will to do what you want as devs, I do appreciate your hard work and I do love the idea KDE - but I am just very sad to say that I (and many other users) will never have a chance to check out all these new fancy functionalities as long as I can't run KDE and keep it stable!

Thanks for great work anyway!

by Peter Penz (not verified)

> Alright, but don't you have a feeling that a new version
> will be the one in which you remove only some of the old
> bugs and add a lot of new ones?

Just some current numbers: since KDE 4.0 we've fixed around 50 Dolphin related bugs and have added 3 minor features/optimizations. Assuming that each of those 3 features will generate 5 new bugs (and that guessed number is quite high), then still we have a rate of 50 fixed bugs vs. introducing 15 new bugs...

> but you get no benefit from using it if it hangs every 20 minutes,
> just like KDE 4.0.0 does on my computer (which is quite new and
> the computer itself is not a source of this problem)

I cannot confirm such an instability with KDE 4.0. I'm working with KDE 4.0 each day and had 2 crashes since the release. There have been a lot of distribution specific issues with KDE 4.0 (especially with Kubuntu) - did you report your crashes to bugs.kde.org so that this can be verified and fixed by us developers? Thanks!

by mkrs (not verified)

As I said, I meant no offence. I'm not here to complain and criticize you - please take it rather as a piece of advice or request from a regular user. I'm very happy that you are working hard and I promise I will try KDE 4.0.1.

And yes, it's true - I do use Kubuntu. Maybe that's why there are so many issues concerning the new KDE.

Cheers!

by SadEagle (not verified)

Lots of people are fixing lots of bugs. Just because you may not see all of the bugfixes in the commit digest doesn't mean they are not there.

by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds (not verified)

I'm a bit confused about the K3b plugins. Why does it use separate plugins and not Phonon for audio encoding and decoding?

PS: Thanks Danny for the Didgest

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Because Phonon is for playing, I don't think it can help with audio encoding and decoding... But I might be wrong, Phonon might do those things in the future.

by SVG Crazy (not verified)

I saw at one of presentation videos of phonon (by trolltech) that they intend to bring encoder/decoder tasks to phonon too.

by Santa Claus (not verified)

What's the difference between decoding and playing??

by attendant (not verified)

decoding can support playing but not the other way around (and phonon only does playing atm).

by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds (not verified)

I'm a bit confused about the K3b plugins. Why does it use separate plugins and not Phonon for audio encoding and decoding?

PS: Thanks Danny for the Didgest

by dh (not verified)

How is the Buzz of apps calculated? :)

by Danny Allen (not verified)

http://commit-digest.org/poppy/?view=buzz-explain

But I must find Tobias Hunger's secret ;)

Danny

by Leo S (not verified)

He has hired a team of BEOs (Buzz Engine Optimizers)

by KDE user since 2.1 (not verified)

in KDE 4.0 systemsettings - > appearance -> Colors

I see there are two color schemes with the name "Zion" - the other is reversed zion - so why this exact name is chosen ?

does this reflect the KDE support for Israel ?

if no , can we have a less provoking name please and keeping kde neutral ?

thanks .

"does this reflect the KDE support for Israel ?"

No, it reflects the KDE support for lions and tigers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Wildlife_Gardens

I swear, the Dot KDE peanut-gallery parade's nitpicking becomes more and more ludicrous as time goes by.

I thought it was just named by a Matrix fan...

I like the KDE4 Konqueror very much. The only thing that prevents me from daily use is that it doesn't restore the session after a crash like firefox.
I don't mind if it crashes, no software is perfect, but I use the tab feature quite extensive and it is annoying if all the tabs are gone after a crash.

Anyway, Konqueror is really great and I like the new restore closed tab feature very much.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

There is the crashes plugin, which remembers what tabs you had open after a crash, but indeed - it forgets any info you entered in webforms etc. I really hope these things will come in time, and I do remember vaguely some dev talking about supporting that stuff when doing session restore - maybe that same architecture can be used for crash prevention as well.

Nice :)

Do I have to enable it somewhere? If not, it seems to be a kubuntu bug.

by mactalla (not verified)

Not sure about the kde4 packages, but for kde3 it's packaged as "konq-plugins" (and I don't see a konq-plugins-kde4, so you might have to dig or perhaps it's not packaged). After installing it, select Settings->Configure Extensions->Tools and select Crashes Monitor.

It's already available in KDE3? Wow, I didn't know that. That's another hidden KDE feature ;)

It seems konq-plugins-kde4 is not packaged for kubuntu. Sad, because the search bar belongs also to the plugins. I hope it get soon packaged.

by Eduardo Robles ... (not verified)

Stay tunned! I plan to add the restore session feature for KDE 4.1 =)

BTW I'm glad you like the restore closed tab feature, I developed it!. I like open source, there's no way I could have done it for the official version of IE for example.

Sounds great. Does that mean that it is on by default? I'm sure there are more user like me who don't know that KDE3 Konqueror can restore the tabs after a crash. It would be nice if there's a dialog which asks for restoring or a new session.

Restore closed tabs and restore after crash were the only reasons for me to stick with firefox. It looks like it's time to switch ;)

by Parminder Ramesh (not verified)

>>Stay tunned! I plan to add the restore session feature for KDE 4.1 =)
>>I'm glad you like the restore closed tab feature, I developed it!

You are a champion - how awesome that KDE has people like you! :)

by SVG Crazy (not verified)

I know it is just the beginning and first of all I want to congratulate all KDE developers for the excellent work so far.

Reading the commit news about k3b a question came to mind:

Wouln't it be interesting to have the k3b device detection code in solid? (since it is optimized for optical devices and gathers much more information than Solid does).

I think it would be great because other apps would have the ability to use it and giving the device media detection tasks to solid would make easier to have k3b running on windows and macosx.

Sorry for my english, still learning.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Your english is OK. And I think what you suggest is the plan already, just needs some time etc...

by TeeZee (not verified)

I would like to see some sort of burning pillar of kde. Something like solid oder phonon just for burning. Is this already easily possible with k3b?

by asdf (not verified)

what about a linux equivalent of EAC (exact audio copy).

It's a shame that I need to keep a windows install just for EAC.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

um, cdparanoia works great.

by asdf (not verified)

no comparison to EAC.
and, no further development in recent years.

by Emil Sedgh (not verified)

Thats the Solid's job.Burning a disc is some kind of interacting with hardware.
I hope to see K3B using Solid soon.this would be better for everyone.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

Solid's job is really to just make it easy for application developers to know what kind of hardware they have on the system. So the use in k3b would be to get a list of CD burners, know what kind of disc was inserted etc. The actually burning would be done the current set of cd burning apps, like what happens now.

by DanaKil (not verified)

I'd love to have a minimal playlist support (integred like the volume or video settings panels) in Dragon Player
I think it's a basic feature in a video player... well, at least as basic as Audio CD support in a video player ;)

I'd love to be able to control the volume with the mouse wheel over the volume button and to delete history too.

by js (not verified)

+1 for Playlist support.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

Playlist support is the opposite of minimalist IMO. That's what Kaffeine is for.

by js (not verified)

Using that rational, adjusting brightness/contrast(which Dragon does) is superfluous. Why is that included? Playlist support is a basic necessity of a video player, far more important than changing video display settings.

Were not talking about a feature which only a minority of users need, playlist support is used by the vast, *VAST* majority of end users. It makes no sense that it isn't included. I know developers are trying to avoid a recurrence of KDE3, where useless features cluttered all the apps but this is insane.

There has to be a balance between Dragon(crippled, unusable for most users) and Kaffeine(so many features, it hurts my eyes looking at the UI).

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

I have some videos where brightness/contrast controls makes the difference between the video being viewable or not. And they are pretty much always needed on a laptop outside if there's any hope to see it at all.

But really I've heard very little demand for playlists. Why is it so necessary? I certainly contest the idea that a vast majority of users expect it in their video player, but I wonder why you think this.

by js (not verified)

>>I certainly contest the idea that a vast majority of users expect it in their video player

I believe users expect a playlist because all popular GUI media players have it (WMP/QT/VLC/Totem/Xine-UI/I really can't name a single video player that doesn't)

>>but I wonder why you think this.

I think of a GUI video player as a convenient method of playing video as opposed to a tedious CLI. Take the following scenario where I, say watch sequential episodes of a TV program:

-show finishes, credits roll
-exit fullscreen mode
-locate next video in Dolphin
-double click to open
-click fullscreen mode

as opposed to:

-show finishes, credits roll
-left arrow

If a GUI video player isn't convenient then whats the point of having one?

Why not try running a poll on your blog to see what the users think?

by js (not verified)

Whoops, I meant "right arrow".

by Parminder Ramesh (not verified)

+1, maybe it would be possible to recycle that cute little view bar from Gwenview (although obviously the "5.0 seconds" thing is not needed for a video collection).

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

I don't really like the UI's of any of the video players you mention, I don't think this is a coincidence. Why would you locate the next video in dolphin as opposed to just using the open file dialog? In this case I suspect you haven't used Dragon Player...

We are planning on adding features to Dragon Player to make it easy to tell what videos you have already watched. But a playlist really is outside of the scope of Dragon Player.

by js (not verified)

I'm confused as to why File -> Open makes it any more convenient. The revised scenario would be:

-show finishes, credits roll
-exit fullscreen mode
-File -> Open video
-click fullscreen mode

as opposed to:

-show finishes, credits roll
-right arrow

Its still more work for a common task not to mention the lack of continuity.

>>In this case I suspect you haven't used Dragon Player...

You'd be right, I haven't had the opportunity yet. I'm sorry if my criticisms aren't accurate but from what you've said, they seem to be on target.

>>We are planning on adding features to Dragon Player to make it easy to tell what videos you have already watched.

Again I'm confused, why would I want to know what I've already finished watching?

>>But a playlist really is outside of the scope of Dragon Player.

I can't really argue there,it is your project.

by Leo S (not verified)

I'm not really a big fan of any playlist players either. If I'm watching episodes of a Tv show I don't really care about having to click on the next one every hour or half hour. For the once in a blue moon that I really need a playlist I can fire up VLC. For the other 99% of the time I'd rather have a very lightweight player with a minimal interface.

by Richard Van Den Boom (not verified)

For me, a minimal player has to allow me to view a single video quickly with the best possible viewing experience. So being able to change birghtness/contrast is definitely part of it.
Having playlist involves organizing what you want to see, and this is IMO definitely out of the scope of a simple video player. It's more for something like an Amarok-for-videos, which I also believe Kaffeine could become but has not really reached this point yet.
Actually, I know more people who organize their movies on their hard disk in directories and watch them by double-clicking on them than I know people using playlists for their videos. And Dragon player (as was Codeine), loading quickly and providing all needed settings to view a single video, is just doing this job perfectly.
Now, I agree that an app like Amarok for videos could be great also. But that's another issue.

by yman (not verified)

+1 for "an app like Amarok for videos".

by Kerr Avon (not verified)

++! from me also!

by Morty (not verified)

Exactly, please keep Dragon Player simple and fit for it's important use case. The use case of simply playing one media file. As Ian say, if you want playlist, use a player thats optimized for that kind of use case.

And playlist are not necessary as simple as it sound, take for instance the 3 major audio players for KDE3. Juk, Noatun and Amarok they all have different kinds of playlist. Which is the best and the one to use.

by logixoul (not verified)

Thanks for taking a strong stance. I'd hate Dragon to turn into the shuttle cockpit that is Kaffeine.

by DanaKil (not verified)

well, when I spoke about a playlist, it was nothing fancy like in Amarok... just a list view in a sidebar with a "+" and "-" button (no tabs like in kaffeine !) which I can show or hide easily.

When I drag-n-drop or select several files, they enqueue in this list and I can go to the next video with a "next" button. All of this can be invisible to the user if he don't want it (no button on the toolbar by default...)

But like someone said, it's your project and if you think you're right, no problem, really :) It's just that, as an official KDE application, Dragon Player will be exposed to many people so be sure to do the good choices.