KDE-CVS-Digest for August 22, 2003

In this week's KDE-CVS-Digest: KStars is now using a new free star map and the telescope interface gains some new wizards.
KGhostview (PDF/PostScript viewer) now has a thumbnail preview.
A new KHotKeys is in the works. KOrganizer is improved with work on drag and drop, alarms and todo lists.The KDE Config Editor moves along. The trash icon is cleaned up. KHTML caret navigation is almost completed. The KDE dialogs can now be used by non-KDE applications. And more.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Jace (not verified)

Especially the new Khotkeys! I'v elaways wante dto be able to use mouse gestures and the keyboard for a hotkey or simply a mouse gesture. This will make me a lot more productive.

The KDialog used by any X application wil certainly make Linux applications other than KDE's look less foreign once developers adopt this.

I'm also glad tos ee Khtml improving steadily, but unfortunately it si still quite a bit behind Apple's version.

Kstars is also cool, I'm not really too much into Astronomy, but I lvoe playing around with it and learning some new things from it.

Thanks for keeping us up to dater Derek and thanks to all the KDE contributors who have made this project so awesome!

by affenschlaffe (not verified)

To take it even further, the upcoming KDE 3.2 also features spell checking - even in Konqueror ;-)
Micha

by anonon (not verified)

Heh. I can see myself using nothing but the config editor in the future. No more aimless clicking in kcontrol.. ;)

by Shift (not verified)

I am always very impressed by the KDE CVS improvement. All seems to be better and better but for weeks now I don't see any "Safari" or "Apple" merge in the changelog of konqueror (regarding the digest).

Can anybody explain what is the situation between Safari and Konqueror for now ? I have lot's of friends who change their website to use XHTML + CSS (That's great) and they ask me to test their site on Konqueror and they don't ask a Safari user to test it because he believe that the engines are the same (or ask a Safari user believing Konqueror react the same). That is not the case because Safari was based on a old KHTML version so KHTML get new patch and in the other side Apple team improved Safari-KHTML engine ( Dave Hyatt presente lot's of them in his blog http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/).

So now we have two KHTML engine which are able to handle different CSS properties or selectors. When will the patchs of Apple be merged ?
And moreover, why Apple didn't work with KDE team on the same CVS. I think Apple is happy to have such a free engine but the way they work is not the best because KDE team has not the same team so it is difficult for it to merged all the patch. If a Safari developer or Konqueror read this, can he explain why KDE team and Safari team don't work together ? Is it possible ? If no, why is it impossible ?

Thanks a lot for the answer and long life to my favorite browser (konqui).

Franck

by lrandall (not verified)

I am not a developer, much less a khtml developer, so what I say could be inaccurate...

Safari was originally based on a 3.0 era khtml snapshot. Since then, they HAVE merged khtml changes into the safari codebase, and of course many of the safari changes have been merged into the khtml codebase. I remember reading something written by one of the devels that many of the safari changes are being merged into khtml, but just haven't always been noted as such. So yes, the safari changes are getting into khtml, but no, its not quite up to date, but is getting there. It is, of course, a moving target, so naturally we'll never have all the safari changes, just as safari will never have all of our changes

by Sleepless (not verified)

Yeap. A shame though...
I was expecting active colaboration and eventualy have one branch actively developed by both teams.

by Jace (not verified)

I've palyed around with Safari 1.0 http://www.apple.com/safari and on my friends Mac it renders pages better and it seems to me faster than Konqueror so I think Konqueror is really behind Safari's codebase, still Konqueror does render most pages well.

But, I do have some layout problems ocassionally and in some cases I can't use some pages at all, for example I can't use Netscape Mail with Konqueror.

Anywayy, thanks for the CVS Digest and yeah Khitkeys 2 does sound reallly cool ;)

by KDE (not verified)

Yeah, I found this too.. for example,

http://www.anerispress.com/wltsim/ renders perfectly with Safari 1.0, but doesn't with Konqueror-cvs (compiled yesterday) :(

by manyoso (not verified)

That page looks just the same in Konqi and Mozilla from what I can see. I don't know what it looks like in Safari.

by KDE (not verified)

It seems to have changed since it was featured on slashdot (the author probably made it smaller by removing a lot of JavaScript and images)

Earlier today there was a JavaScript menu that worked in Safari and Mozilla, but not in Konq.

by Roland (not verified)

There is a big danger that The configuration editor will tempt developers to leave out (or even remove) configuration options in kcontrol and just say "just use kconf" to users.

One of KDE's great advantages is it's customizability. Please keep it that way.

Agreed, though I'm sure this will happen.

Does anyone happen to now if kconf displays options not included in KControl, and even those not in the config files themselves? There are a lot of settings we don't get to alter in KControl that I'd love to get my hand on, especially if kconf can provide an explanation of the settings.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

> There is a big danger that The configuration editor will tempt developers to leave out (or even remove) configuration options in kcontrol and just say "just use kconf" to users.

I seriously doubt a developer would want to do that. I don't. However... if we introduce a feature in a minor release during a string freeze we would have two choices... tell you to set it in kconf or a text editor. So far we have had only the text editor option. We can't add to config dialogs during a string freeze. So this could see use under those conditions.

by Tim Jansen (not verified)

If this a rarely used feature, say by 0.001% of the user base and by people who have special needs and the neccessary skills, I would say that this is a good thing.

An example would be a debugging mode for developers.

by Mark Hannessen (not verified)

creating a basis and an advanced mode sounds more like a solution to me.

by Dawnrider (not verified)

Hi Mark...

Unfortunately, that doesn't really work. Having a basic and advanced system poses, first, a most essential problem:

- What is advanced and what is not?

The line there is never clear, and unfortunately, you get users who are advanced in one area, such as understanding details of fonts, but not others, such as networking.

Moreover, it also causes problems for technical support, since the user may not see the same controls that the tech support person sees.

Finally, it also breaks the user experience, since there are hidden controls, which only appear when the mode is changed. That really does confuse users.

What the config editor will allow, is users to have access to the really tiny features to tweak their systems, which, while fun, are not relevent to most people. So in short, we have KControl as the normal options and KConfEditor for really obscure, pedantic stuff.

by got one (not verified)

which inevitably leads to the question

What is really obscure, pedantic stuff?

I don't see how this is easier to answer than the basic/advanced question...

by Tom (not verified)

Can somebody using CVS HEAD tell me, and others who might be interested, how much has been done to tackle the bloated context menus? I recently gave GNOME another go, and just having a clean, simple looking file manager almost made me want to swap, until I noticed all the features I need in KDE.

I'm thinking of things like the 3 open options being in the RMB menu on a web page (better grouped into an "open" menu?), "Encrypt file" & "Copy To" & "Stop animations" & similar options going into the proposed "actions" submenu, etc.

Also, have the menus in the Konqueror menubar been simplified at all? They confuse me after years of using KDE, so goodness knows what a new user thinks when they look through them!

by Carlo (not verified)

That's the main reason, why I'm still using Mozilla. The visible menus entries (menubar & popupmenus) should change dynamically, depending on the visible data. And I want to have them totally configurable, to adjust them to my needs for whatever protocol I use. Even if Konqueror would have the best rendering engine, I wouldn't use it, because the interface sucks. :-(

by KDE (not verified)

> should change dynamically, depending on the visible data.

They are.

by Carlo (not verified)

Oh, yes - didn't noticed it, because I'm so dissatisfied with the konqueror interface that I use it seldom. That being said - I use the functionality via Krusader (and Mozilla) instead. I never liked this explorer/bookmark approach. To me filemanager and browser are two different/seperate things.

The other points are still valid:
1. In general overcrowded mainmenus
2. The missing configurability of mainmenus and popupmenus.

eg.: http/popupmenu - it inludes non-relating entries like 'encrypt'(kgpg), 'create data cd with k3b', and a lot of other entries which relate, but which i never use. In fact the both top sections are useless to me. Selected text, doesn't cause a popupmenu with a copy entry in it, etc..

by Sleepless (not verified)

Yes they are!
And even though they are, the menus are still a huge mess! I find it amazing how messy they are, honest! :)

- Let's click on the Floppy Icon
Open With?
Encrypt File?
Create data CD with K3B?
Edit file type?
Add to bookmarks?
Copy to public folder?

I'll just stop here... I understand why this happens, but really does any one actually thinks this should appear there? Did anybody ever actually used this? Honest it's just crazy :)
Also try clicking in a link and count the entries. Even stuff like the back arrow shouldn't be there. Why would you click a link to go back?

Anyway this is 3.1.3, don't know how things are in CVS.

by Alex (not verified)

On SUSE 8.2 KDE 3.1.1 I get a whopping 17 context menu entries and that's not counting the submenu entries!!!

What annoys me the most about these super duper bloated menus all over KDE is that they often have just about everything EXCEPT what I want.

Let's take Konqueror for example:
I highlight some text and bring up a context menu, I have 18 freaking entries like Open in Background Tab, Create Data with K3b, Encrypt File, Secuirity, Stop Animations, Back, Forward, Reload, Open With etc. - just about anything you can imagine but not A FREAKING "COPY" command, sure there's COPY TO> but that copies the whole page!

Now the funny thing is, when I right click a link there is a simple COPY command, but not when I right click highlighted text?!

Mozilla is still ways better in usability and features for now.

In this case for example the context menu for the text and just an empty color is the same.

by Dario (not verified)

I'm using Mozilla mainly because of the more powerful tab features, cleaner more logical interface, bookmakr search/save feature (makes my bookmarks organize themselves), history search feature, powerful pop up blocking, and finally better compatibility.

by Ned Flanders (not verified)

I agree that Konqueror has some problems, like the home page that should be different between the file manager and the web browser. For an end-user, these two kinds of applications are very different.

However, not all parts of the Konqueror interface suck. Web shortcuts for example are very useful. In fact, they're the main reason why I almost always use Konqueror. The cookie management system is also better in Konqi than in any other browser I know.

by Carlo (not verified)

> For an end-user, these two kinds of applications are very different.

As an end-user I would wonder, why I have to browse directories. The applications should "know", which data belongs to them.

I just don't like the "explorer" approach. In the end, why not adding something like konsole://, kword://, rtfm://, ...

In german exists an expression for this: "eierlegende Wollmilchsau". In english: "ovulating woolmilksow" - I assume there is a better translation, but I don't know it. The meaning should be clear, I think?!

by rjw (not verified)

Document centric is the big thing, not app centric.

People should not need to think about apps, just what 'things' they have.

What really needs to happen is better metadata and search.

by Carlo (not verified)

Normally, I know what I want to do and start the application i need to do the job, instead of opening a directory and searching for a document in a bunch of files. Maybe document centric is the "big thing", but it is not the way I work.

by katakombi (not verified)

quite interesting, how always!

but what the heck does caret navigation support in konqueror mean?

Any suggestions?

>8^) kata

by Derek Kite (not verified)

It has to do with editing rich text format. IE and Mozilla do it. I don't know what the application is.

Derek

by Mike (not verified)

contentEditable/Caret-Navigation is important for Content Management Systems (CMS).
CMS (in case you don't know) basically means:
In a larger company there can be lots of people who don't know HTML,
but they want to change some text or numbers.
CMS systems let you log in, go to the page and edit your content directly on the
page. For this to work it's necessary that a browser can show a caret just like in Word.
If you can get your hands on a Windows (Ugh!) PC with Internet Explorer (Ugh,Ugh!)
then you can try feeding it the following code:

This DIV can be edited on the page. Cool - isn't it?
by Andreas Joseph Krogh (not verified)

But it can't. If I place the above mentioned HTML-code in a file and access it with either Konqueror OR Mozilla, neither of them are able to edit the innherHTML.

by Leo Savernik (not verified)

Yeah, caret navigation in khtml is the same thing as in Mozilla: It display a blinking caret with which you can move through the text by the keyboard.

It does *not* allow you to edit text. So contenteditable won't work. But caret navigation is a prerequisite for that.

by Andreas Joseph Krogh (not verified)

OK, so how do I activate it?

by Leo Savernik (not verified)

There's no means to be activated by the user yet.

It will be possible by pressing F7, but that patch is still pending.

by Andreas Joseph Krogh (not verified)

OK, thanks for the info.

by KDE User (not verified)

I've been using a very old khotkeys with recent KDE releases for a couple huge reasons: It doesn't require a menu entry for a shortcut and thus won't use startup notification for every single keypress, and it allows you to run a command even if previous commands haven't completed (or, at least, it runs them in succession very fast).

The new khotkeys (as done through kmenuedit) always shows a notification, and is slow in responding. For a lot of programs, this isn't a big problem. However, I have mapped F10 and F11 to volume down and volume up. The old khotkeys does great with this: I can hold down F10, and my volume goes down quickly, without cluttering up my taskbar. The new khotkeys takes lots of time to run each volume change, and puts tons of notifications in the taskbar.

I have other similar keys, such as F5-F8 for controlling xmms. My main question, then, is does the new khotkeys work properly, like the old one, or does it have the same semantics as the current one?

by Jan (not verified)

For Volume you can assign keys in KMix. Just right click on a slider and select
"Assign keys..." (Or whatever it is called in the English version)

by KDE User (not verified)

Thanks for the tip, but I don't have KDE multimedia installed, and I have other keystrokes that I don't want notification on, too.

Worst case I use my own keygrabber that I wrote in conjunction with KDE's, but I'd rather have it all managed through the same place.

by Lubos Lunak (not verified)

You can disable notification by adding X-KDE-StartupNotify=false in the corresponding .desktop file under share/applnk (KMenuEdit in CVS HEAD has checkbox for that, I'm not sure if 3.1 has that too).
I'll have a look at the problem with the delay with repeated keypresses.

by KDE User (not verified)

Ohh, excellent, thank you very much.

As for the delayed keypress, that was an issue with KDE 3.1's hotkey system. I'm using your khotkeys snapshot from 20020412 and it works absolutely perfectly. So if you've ported your code over to KDE 3.2 then I'd imagine it still works properly. If only the KDE 3.1 code was updated that there might be an issue with delayed presses.

By the way, thanks for khotkeys, I think I'd probably die without it. It makes things sooooo much more convenient.

by Alex (not verified)

Will SuperKaramba be included in 3.2? I think it should as long as more developers work on it to bring it up to a 1.0 release and improve the internals, maybe adopt a more flexible deisgn and XML themes like gDesklets.

Though I love the simplicity of it:

Create a text file called myexample.theme

In it type this:

karamba W=140 H=20 #I am commenting! :p w = width and h = height these define the size of the theme
text value="SK is super easy!! ;)" #just tells karamba to put SK is super easy!! ;) in the space we just created

Yes, this is really how easy it is and it has full session support and will appear on all desktops etc.!

Yet, it needs better documentation, the last API update was .28, for example and again I suggest checking out the gDesklets source also.

I don't really know how to do anything more complicated than a clock or an alarm etc. but it seems pretty easy in general.

by not_registered (not verified)

no thank you.

by CE (not verified)

Isn't it partially redundant?

by :-) (not verified)

how so? i really dont know so educate me.

by CE (not verified)

Regarding features KDE already has.

by Alex (not verified)

No, its not redundant and it will be able to integrate into KDE seamlessly, look at:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/124 and http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/125

Come December, I am sure Karamba will be ready for primetime and be good enough to get included into KDE! You wouldn't have to use it if you don't want to, it will just be included in extragear or something.

SK is very popular and many people would like it in 3.2.

by CE (not verified)

But it would be nice to have some features of it in the KDE core parts.
But as a whole it's too separate for me.

by Giovanni (not verified)

i'd like to see it to in 3.2

by Anonymous (not verified)

No way, it's missing maturity at least.