In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Work in Plasma, with extra sources for the Weather data engine, work on the applet browser, and the start of SystemTray and RSIBreak plasmoids and a "next generation" application launcher, named Lancelot. Cut-down versions of Korundum and Smoke libraries for writing scripted Plasma applets. More interface work for Amarok 2. More work on XESAM (a shared metadata specification) integration in Strigi. An Akonadi resource for Facebook information. Support for compressed documents, and more work on DjVu support in okular. Several new features in the KRDC Summer of Code project, including bookmark support, sound output, and toolbar options. Custom text shaping in KWord, and significant progress in the colour mixing capabilities of Krita in KOffice. Various optimisations in KBounce, KPixmapCache, KDevelop, Marble and KOffice. KOffice 2.0 Alpha 2 (1.9.92) is tagged for release. Beginnings of a D-Bus interface in KTorrent for KDE 4. KNotes and Kompare begin to be ported, Kenolaba completely ported to KDE 4. Reworkings in Phonon, with the Phonon-NMM backend moved to playground/multimedia, as it is not ready for KDE 4.0. The Kaboodle music player is removed from the kdemultimedia module, whilst kaudiocreator moves to extragear for KDE 4.0.
Comments
Is it just me, or is the new oxygen style looking a lot like a the Domino KDE3 style (especially the one supplied with KDEMOD in Arch Linux)?
Maybe it's just me, and me being so used to the Kubuntu default look, that everything different looks the same.
Look at the screenshots on http://kdemod.ath.cx/ to see what I mean.
Hmmm, domino can look vaguely alike, but I think Oxygen is pretty original...
Now it must be said that Domino is very tweakable (just look at the screenshots on kde-look.org) and can look like almost anything (custom gradiants is a stroke of pure genius, imho). And the Domino theme KDEMOD ships with is very pleasant to use, so I surely wouldn't mind if the Oxygen style borrows some ideas from them (you shouldn't sacrifice prettiness and usability for originality, imho).
No it's just you. I checked the screenshots on that so-called KDEMOD site and I actually use Domino. You need to check with a medical professional about your eyesight.
Quote: "Planned features include (for example) NX support".
Wow! It will be very nice!
I can only agree on this and would really love to see this feature (nice looking to Urs ;-).
Can't you open an NX connection via the shell?
Either way KRDC having this is good, its more intuitive than the shell version.
Some time ago tere was still some tension between KPDF (no Okular) and KViewShell. So what happened to the latter?
It's called ligature nowdays.
It moved to extragear: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/extragear/graphics/ligature/
i hope i am wrong, but it seems that the video players for Kde are falling behind, nearly all the commits are either for Amarok or phonon thing, what's about kaffeine, kplayer etc...
i keep watching for extragear, and playground and no sign of them. too sad
It seems to me that codeine is already ported.
I suppose the other ones will get ported now that kdelibs API and Phonon is stable.
Kaffeine4 gets love. It lives in /branches/work/kaffeine4
Admittedly I haven't been keeping my [pet project|plan for world domination] Video Player up to date with kdelibs API, I should update it sometime. I bet it works a lot better now then it did in May thanks to the work on Phonon.
Yes please do, I really like codeine speed to load and simplicity and would like to see it in KDE4. :-)
Actually Ian Monroe started to port Codeine to KDE4 a while ago (and renamed it to Video Player). He's currently busy with Amarok's playlist code though.
Maybe afterwards he's gonna hack on it some more, or maybe I'll help out a bit too, as I love Codeine very much. Or maybe we can motivate Max Howell to hack on it (he's the original author). That would be cool.
Codeine is amazing. Simple, yet just works every time. It should really be included in the default KDE install to increase awareness.
+1
Yes, Codeine is by far the best video player KDE has. It does what it's supposed to do, and it does it smart. Much better than the other players... Kaffeine tries to do way too much (I hate the concept of mediaplayers, word processors should not be combined with cdburn applications, why should videoplayers be merged with audioplayers?). And KMplayer is technically great, works fine for embedded stuff, but is just a bit awkward to use.
Actually, there's a significant problem here. Some "container formats" can contain video (without sound), audio, or both. Telling which it is before you open the file is difficult.
That said, I agree with your general statement that video players and audio players should be separate. It'd be nice to see a mime-like smart file identification system (or better, some sort of file attribute tracking from downloads etc.) which knows what a substreams are, and lets you specify the file handler system-wide.
Codeine is a great application. And in my opinion a similar simple application should also exist for sound. Hope somebody brings Kaboodle back, or write something like it.
The need for a simple click-and-play soundapplication is real, when you only want to check out a sound file there is not need for playlist and collections. And it should always be default for playing those files, not Amorok, JuK, Noatun or any other playlist touting player. When I click on a sound file I simply want it played, not added to some collection or playlist. Always a drag having to change the preferred action for the mimetypes back to Kaboodle, after installing Amorok and similar.
Personally I hate to have bunch of application just for one thing.Kaffeine could play your soundfiles when you DoubleClick on it...Why Kaboodle should be included? Amarok Can play It too!
And guys, Amarok didnt enter the kdemultimedia and is still in Extragear...
Which logic means that one of the most loved KApplications, should not be in kde default applications?
now that Applications couldnt enter for 4.0, I really hope and wish to see AmaroK in kdemultimedia for 4.1
Amarok chooses not to be in kdemultimedia so it can release when it chooses to rather than when the rest of kde is ready to release.
Yes I know that, but thats really not a good reason...
It is a good reason. The amarok PPL don't want to be tied to the irregular, 8-10 month KDE schedule, but release way more often. What's wrong with that? K3B is in extragear as well as Digikam...
>Why Kaboodle should be included? Amarok Can play It too!
It's rather simple, but you seem to miss the point.
Not only are Amorak and other complex players big applications with long startup times, they will also add the file to your playlist etc. Which is most likely not the wanted result when clicking on a random sound file in your filemanger. Adding to your playlist is better done from within the application, by drag and drop or by using right click and a servicemenu option.
Kaboodle provides the play once functionality, for the use case for files you are not interested in adding to your collection/playlist. You now for those music files from your little sister you just "has to hear", funny soundfiles mailed from friends or interviews of KDE developers. Generally stuff you check out, but don't want messing up your playlists.
I rather agree with this : I like to have one simple app to play file from the net or from the file manager, and one more complex managing file lists for my collections of music or films. A bit like having a fast image viewer and Digikam to organize your photos is nice too.
As you said, the main reason is startup speed, but also avoiding things like addition to playlists, etc.
Actually, Codeine fits well here. Though intended as video player, it perfectly plays stand-alone sounds, including from internet, with its xine background.
The point of Emil, I think, is avoiding to have noatun, kaboodle, and similar apps all provided in the standard package for the same task basically. And I agree with it. I think most people would have enough with codeine/video player for all one-shot media play (without having the app in the task bar, etc.), something like kaffeine for movie collections and amarok for music collection.
I dont know about Codeine, But know Kaffeine supports Audio Playback, you could doubleclick on your MP3 File and Kaffeine opens, Plays it easily.
I would Prefer that Kaffeine gets some usability love instead of having another Player, Kaboodle, Noatun, Juk or....
But then Kaffeine should remove 80% of what they added since their 0.4.2 release. I think they went in the totally wrong direction with all their playlist bullshit. Actually Codeine is what Kaffeine should be: an actual video player.
I think the parent has a great idea: use Codeine for quick and simple video and audioplaying. If you want to have things like playlists and coverart for audio, go for Amarok. and if, for some weird reason, you want those for video, use Kaffeine.
BTW and I'm all for removing Kaffeine from the default KDE. It's not that usefull for normal users. It doesn't do video well (way to complex) nor music (both Amarok and Juk do a better job).
But I Completely Disagree...
Application Developers work hard to add features to their applications and you say the Full Featured Applications get of the KDE?
I Think Kaffeine could be better if just gets some usability Love, Im confused with the GUI too...But I never want this full featured application out!
100% agree with you, Kaffeine was a really good program, but it's latest revisions "destroyed" almost all the good work done (there are comments from me on kde-apps when Kaffeine 0.5.0 was released, dated 2004).
Anyway, I suggest the Amarok people to rename (once again :PP) Video Player to... Player, add minimal support to sound file (well, I think it's already present), put it into kdebase and ship it as the default program associated with every multimedia file in a standard KDE 4.0 installation.
For that kind of situation, I'd rather let Konqueror open it. Konqueror can open sound files inside itself using kio or kparts, or send it to an external application depending on configuration. You could set it up so left-clicking on the file opens it in konqui, and middle clicking sends it to the external app (e.g. amarok). With KDE defaulting to Dolphin on the 4 series it will be a bit different, I guess.
yeah, Dolphin won't use kparts. Yet, the preview pane could show a play button for audio and video - problem solved. No separate app needed.
Open the sound file in the filmanger is no good either, since it will lock up your filemanager while playing. And most cases you are interested in continuing to work with it while the soundfile plays. Since those files are usually more than a few seconds, this becomes impractical.
> Kaboodle provides the play once functionality, for the use case for files you are not interested in adding to your collection/playlist.
For this case, I'm looking forward to Plasma, when you're able to define multiple default options for files which are symbolized by small dots around the file icon when hovering it. (It was in one of the screencasts some weeks ago.) This way, you can define "Play Audio File" and "Add to Amarok Playlist" and get both with one click.
will this also be possible in dolphin and therefore konqueror? (the thing with the icon-edges ^^). i also didn't unterstand from the comments above if dolphin will be able to play videos and sound files directly or if it needs to open a 3rd party app (or konqueror ^^). now that konqueror also uses the dolphin part.. is konqueror capable of doing this? (with the dolphin view). could someone please explain this to me?
Its likely that Amarok (and some of the other neat KDE extragear apps) will have their last stable version tagged and then that will be released along with the next KDE release.
All the "good" KDE distros ignore the kdemultimedia, kdepim etc. and just pick and choose what KDE apps they want to be installed anyways.
I agree when you say: "The need for a simple click-and-play soundapplication is real, when you only want to check out a sound file there is not need for playlist and collections."
Maybe you like the mockup I did some time ago:
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Mini+Audio+Applet?content=34884
Have you read about the new Job Progress Interface in KDE4? If not, have a look at [http://dot.kde.org/1169588301/]. It would be a suitable interface for simply playing a sound file and showing how much of it has been played already. As far as I understand, that interface even supports buttons, such as pause and seek (see for example the "Pause" and "Cancel" buttons in the dialog for the download of "install-x86-universal-2005.1.iso" in the screenshot).
With all the new desktop stuff going on (Plasmoids etc, enhanced Kwin) are we looking at increased memory/swap usage? Are we going to need more than 512mb of memory for example? New gfx cards? How much disc space for a "standard" kde 4 install? Any noticeable enhancements using dual-core cpu's?
I'm not trolling, just asking :-) Also hoping we're not going down the road known as Vista :-|
Phil.
> With all the new desktop stuff going on [] are we looking at increased memory/swap usage?
In contrary to what people commonly say; new versions of software in KDE typically use LESS resources than the previous ones. This is because we keep on working on the code whereas companies releasing software tend to focus only on new features not touching the old stuff because they are afraid it would break.
What this effectively means is that new features and new versions really don't have to take more memory. And in KDE4, you'll actually see that the memory usage of a typical desktop is lower than in a previous version.
Naturally we provide a lot of cool new features that will gladly eat all your memory and GPU cycles if you let it.
I hope you understand that providing more optional goodies to waste your computing resources on is an entirely different thing then what you are asking. Note the optional part in my sentence again :)
In other words; if you use the exact same feature set as you used in kde3, a good memory count (hard to get under unix) is going to tell you that you are not using more memory. And its likely going to get even better when KDE4 matures.
Cheers!
That's good to know. TBH the plasmoids and eye-candy really don't do a lot for me, 99% of my windows are maximized anyway so I rarely see my desktop. About the only thing I have that's non-standard is Liquid Weather for SuperKaramba. Dont' get me wrong, a little desktop plasmoid to control Amarok or something would be fun but it certainly isn't the reason I use KDE and I don't want to have to spend $$$ upgrading my machine to run KDE 4.
On a side issue, thanks to all the KDE-Devs for your hard work and dedication, I'm looking forward to seeing KDE 4 released and using it. I'm glad there's guys like you giving us an alternative to Microshaft.
Phil.
> 99% of my windows are maximized anyway so I rarely see my desktop
You know, Aaron has explained several times, quite likely a couple of times more often than he expected to, that Plasma is not just about the desktop. The desktop is only one possible "container" for Plasma applets.
Your current setup probably has one or more panels, maybe autohiding, etc. Better think of Plasma as something around (in 3D) your windows, including above and below (where "below" would be the traditional desktop).
Just switching to Qt4 lowers the memory consumption, I believe.
KDE SVN runs pretty fast on my really old ThinkPad, and things are far from optimized at the moment.
i wonder about the cpu performance.. i mean now that kde is going to use svg.. everytime you resize something you need much cpu power? the iconcache doesn't solve this problem if i'm right.. it only provides icons at a specific size. (afaik you aren't able to use normal pngs from a default kde setup)
I've been reading the comments over at Slashdot and OSNews following KDE related articles and must say that I don't know how you guys and gals do it, keep your spirits up in spite of all the trolling you keep running into.
I have some experience with such problems (not only are you uncredited for your hard work, you get put down for it and have to defend it) and this is just a simple "You KDE-ers rock, thanks for all your hard work", FWIW.
Long-time KDE user and (hopefully) contributor-to-be. :)
Yep! I second that!
Thirded :)
I'm sending out Big amounts of love to all the KDE contributors!
It's exciting to see that NX is planned for KRDC, but I think it would also be cools to see SSH support. SSH support for forwarding ports, setting up VNC/SSH, or even just plain old SSH would be useful IMO.