KDE Commit-Digest for 10th June 2007

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Umbrello gets a code generator for the D programming language. Further work in Plasma. Initial work to allow the Dolphin file view component to be embedded into Konqueror. More work in the KOrganizer Calendar and KRDC Summer of Code projects, with the start of the Icon Cache, TextTool Plugins in KOffice and Kopete Messenger update projects. Start of a Solid interface in Amarok, with breakthroughs in support for the Jamendo music service. KDevelop begins to be ported to the KDevPlatform structure. A return to progress on the Cokoon SVG window decoration engine, with the addition of PyQt4 bindings. A streamlined command-line screenshot utility, kbackgroundsnaphot, is created. The Gwenview image viewer moves to the kdegraphics module, whilst KPF, KWifiManager and KDict are removed from the kdenetwork module for KDE 4.

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Comments

by lynx (not verified)

bah, I find kdict very useful, however crude it may be. Perhaps in the next release ...

by superstoned (not verified)

Removed from the kde-network part hopefully doesn't mean removed from KDE, but moved to extragear or something...

by superstoned (not verified)

BTW I use it a lot as well, I esp loved the kdict applet in the kicker.

by Urs Wolfer (not verified)

It has been deleted in trunk. It is still in 3.5 branches.

The trunk version worked not at all. Feel free to grab it and make it working! (It's probably even better to start from scratch...)

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

i don't think there is a question as to weather a dictionary application is useful or not. it's that kdict wasn't ported, wasn't maintained and reimplemented all sorts of things that we have perfectly great APIs for now. it was written back when none of these things existed.

you could probably reimplement all of kdict in a couple 100 lines of code these days =)

by Louis (not verified)

That would make a sweet Plasmoid.

by Christian Parpart (not verified)

press ALT+F2, then type dict:blah if you're looking for a definition of "blah". this is the way I use dict currently. however, before I noticed that shortcut, I was using (and still sometimes) kdict alot. to sad to read this "news" '(

by Louis (not verified)

Yep, the shortcut is alright, but kdict pulls definitions from various sources and doesn't open a web page full of ads. It hope somebody gets the motivation to port it. I wonder why kdict never got integrated into, for example, KWord (right-click, Define Word) and the rest of KDE similar to the way KSpell works. Just curious.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

because kspell is a library and kdict is a stand alone application.

by Louis (not verified)

Right, I guess that's kinda what I meant; why not librari-tize kdict and make it available to all apps. Seems like it would be a very handy right-click item in a lot of situations, and you say it would be a very small amount of code.

by Chaoswind (not verified)

Well, the video is nice, but i ask me, how useful KListView will be. Has KListView something like folding? So the user could hide those categories, he does'nt need?

by fast penguin (not verified)

And will there be more categories? Would be pretty cool to have files grouped by file type. Videos on one, music in another, executables in another, etc.

by Peter Penz (not verified)

Yes, it will be possible to group all kind of sortings (file type, name, date, permissions, group, ...). Currently the implementation is done only for file names, but it will be more a straight forward task to implement the other kind of categories later.

by Coward (not verified)

Try posting your suggestions directly on his blog:
http://www.ereslibre.es/?p=51
he might not look here.

by superstoned (not verified)

Good point. I like the fact you select files by clicking the top line, but normally, one would expect it to fold...

by illissius (not verified)

I seem to remember discussion a long time ago about how Plasma would work in multiple 'layers'; e.g., it would be not only the Desktop, but also Dashboard. Am I remembering correctly? If so, is it still planned?

by Carsten Niehaus (not verified)

Dashboard?

by Lans (not verified)

If you mean like on top of windows, I think the answer is 'yes'. However, AFAIK, it's still not implanted.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> If so, is it still planned?

yes =)

by Phil (not verified)

This is really great... different layers like the applets, the desktop etc. rising up an coming down again, wow. OSX has the dashboard, true, but the concept has so much more potential!

Can't wait to see where kde is going, but i know you guys have to take your time. Keep up the awesome work

by Samuel Mukoti (not verified)

When i first heard of Plasma, i thought of some featuers i'd seen on OSX Leapard is there any similar features in the new proposed taskbar? http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/desktop.html

thx

Sam

by Chaoswind (not verified)

What's so new at leopards taskdock? A little Eyecandy and the stack for folders, but what more? KDE has some (more or less) similar docks, and i think they there will be more coming with plasmas easy handling of such things. In fact, i wrote myself my personal taskdock just with pyqt/pykde and it's an easy piece of work (until i come to the artwork ^_-).

On the other side, i think apples taskdock-implementation sucks. There is to much bloat and it miss important functions. So i think kde4's community will have at the final of there development, some really nice solution itself :)

by Andre (not verified)

Now I understand why it is named "Dolphin".

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11409/11409-h/11409-h.htm

by zvonsully (not verified)

Now thats an interesting thing ....

by stefanm (not verified)

I'm very sad that nearly nothing is going on in Konqueror. Only because the all new Dolphin is coming around, everyone is putting one's power in it. The KListView looks very good, OK, and it is easier to use, agreed. But was there no possibility to do this in Konqueror?

I would like Konqueror to be overworked for 4.1 or higher (or even reimplemented, if necessary) to incorporate the features that Dolphin has brought to us. For example, there is an urgent necessity for a more dynamic interface (I want a combined web browser, file viewer, etc.; but I need different functions for all of these).

I hope that I do not tell new things.

by Kami (not verified)

I agree! I wish also for an advanced konqueror, where can link the signals of one kpart to slots of some other kparts, or where i can have as much tabbed-areas as i need (splitting is nice, but lacks important informations for navigation).

But, IIRC was one reason for dolphin, the lack of developer for konqueror. And also, as far as possible, the new features from dolphin will come to konqueror also, sooner or later.

by ac (not verified)

this is not fair at all. there was no development on konqueror before dolphin even existed.

but more important: you allready get most of dolphins features in konqueror when the embeding of the dolphin main view is done.

so, stop complaining!

by reihal (not verified)

I wish the insiders could post an explicit report on the state of Konqueror in KDE 4, here on the dot.
Are they expecting Safari on KDE, so they can ditch Konqi? What's going on?

by whatever noticed (not verified)

>>I wish the insiders could post an explicit report on the state of Konqueror in KDE 4, here on the dot.

it is already stated that konqueror will stay in kde4 as an advanced filemanager/webbrowser/fileviewer.

by reihal (not verified)

Yes, we all know by now that it will stay. That wasn't my question.

I want to know about KDE 4 specific changes and plans for the future, if any.

Will Apple port Safari to KDE as thanks for the loan of KHTML? If so, then what?

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

look in playground/libs/webkitkde.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> I'm very sad that nearly nothing is going on in Konqueror

you shouldn't be sad; konqueror has changed more for 4.0 that it did for 3.5.

> The KListView looks very good, OK, and it is easier to use, agreed. But was
> there no possibility to do this in Konqueror?

KListView is in kdelibs. it's used by konqueror today.

can i please suggest that instead of getting concerned about issues which are probably not graspable unless you either see the apps in action or understand how the code goes together beneath that, that you just wait for 4.0 to come out and try things out then?

> incorporate the features that Dolphin has brought to us

which would those be, exactly?

> there is an urgent necessity for a more dynamic interface

if there's an urgent need then someone will at some point step up and write the code.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

You can't really embed Dolphin in Konuqeror. There are two questions.

1. There are UI features that could be added to Konqueror.

2. There are new display methods that could be made into KParts so that they could be used in Konqueror.

These are both ideas with some merit.

--
JRT

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Man, that avaible icon os VERY ugly in my opinion, and dosen't represent well what's going on (what's with that lock?). Is it just me to think it?

Sometimes it's better to use a simpler icon than something more realistc, because too much details make the idea do be lost.

by reihal (not verified)

They are not icons. They are Mac wanna be, italian design, photo-realisticly rendered pretty pictures.

tackat and Everaldo made icons.

There, I said it.

by Luca Beltrame (not verified)

There, you are trolling. Post something constructive instead of just expressing distaste that will not help anyone and will just make contributors feel sour.
Icons are a matter of personal preference, I admit, although I really like Oxygen over the overly-cartoonistic Crystal.
Besides Crystal had license issues for a while (more like, a lack of license) and difficulty in obtaining sources. There are more advantages with Oxygen even from this point of view.

by reihal (not verified)

And good trolling it is.
Icons should be cartoonistic to be visible, you seem to object to them being
overly so. Exactly how is Everaldos Crystal SVG icons too much cartoonistic?
(And please, no gnome-talk about licenses)

by Luca Beltrame (not verified)

They're rather childish-looking, in my opinion (probably a better adjective than "cartoonistic"). Not to mention that as far as I can tell the set hasn't been updated in a long time (but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

I prefer the Oxygen approach, which IMO is also quite polished (and we see progress every day) and also more "transparent" because we see what is going on, even though there is an unavoidable personal touch in these things.

Licenses *are* a problem when you want to reuse someone else's work, and Crystal did not have any for a long time. Not to mention that the original SVGs were hard to obtain.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

We should try to avoid what appears to be trolling because there are valid issues here.

It is a valid criticism of CrystalSVG that there were usability issues.

It is a valid issue that icons which are too realistic are not easily visible -- especially in smaller sizes.

I agree with the opinion that icons need to be cartoonistic to be visible. So, I started an icon theme to illustrate that point:

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/USR+HiColor?content=27410

This has only received a 40% good rating. I don't know if this means that people don't think that they are good or simply if they wouldn't use this style. So, I didn't continue to make a full theme. OTOH, if I knew that 40% of the KDE users value usability over eye-candy, then having such a theme is needed.

by Mercurio (not verified)

Yes you are right!

They are not just icons, They are Mac wanna be, italian design, photo-realisticly rendered pretty pictures...

... they are wonderful! ^^

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> Mac wanna be,

if by "mac" you mean "sophisticated and elegant", then .. sure. that's what makes the "mac look", well, the "mac look". while i'm certain that there are people who don't like such an approach (no visual approach pleases everyone) it does tend to be more widely appreciated.

> italian design,

good job on the nationalistic stereotyping there, buddy. *sigh*

> photo-realisticly rendered pretty pictures.

actually, only the physical device icons are photorealistic. the rest are not photorealistic at all, but simply high quality art that emphasizes beauty over starkness. starkness is useful in small form factor design or for serving the needs of, for instance, low vision users (we have the accessibility pack for that). given that we have a solution for accessibility and that the icons will be used overwhelminginly on 1024x768 and above displays (though they look great on 800x600 too; i test at that res regularly) it makes sense.

btw, if you're wondering what the definition of photorealistic is, you should check out this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorealistic

by madpuppy (not verified)

Hey! I kinda' thought that the "Italian design" comment was more of a complement than anything else! after all, architecture, automobile design, food, wine, pottery, glass work.......well you see what I'm getting at. not that I am saying that these things are lacking anywhere else in the world but, c'mon! Italy!

All joking aside, the Oxygen Icons are different, different gets people saying things that are insulting and and of course there are the Mac trolls comparing everything that the KDE dev's and artists create as poor copies of their preferred OS. same with the MS trolls and the Gnome trolls. you cannot do anything about trolls I guess.

by reihal (not verified)

"Italian design" was neither nationalistic stereotyping nor a complement.

"Design" in the esthetic sense of the word, indicates a tendency for "form before function".

by Mercurio (not verified)

And what does "Italian" indicate? ^^

Curiously the same English word "design" is used in Italian also, but I never found it be used with that meaning.

Nationalistic or semantic stuff aside, usability is the main concern of Oxygen artists, you can easily see it reading their blogs, and I'm sure they will welcome your contribute.

On the other hand they can't make a graphic style that can please all, and it seems most people like the current, Portuguese-design (^^), Oxygen's one.

by reihal (not verified)

Batch process the lot with more contrast, thats my contribution.

(Lets avoid this quagmire of semantics for now)

by reihal (not verified)

"mac look" appeals to artsy-fartsy types. Are we not nerds? Yes, and nerds demands nerdy icons!

"Italian design" is a concept and a multi billion $ industry. Here's nationalistic stereotyping, buddy:
"Stupid canucks. I hate them so much" - Homer

You avoided to diss tackat and Everaldo, and rightly so. I remember tackat made an explicit point in
having a black outline on the icons to make them visible.
The main problem with the Oxygen icons is low contrast, which make them look fuzzy.
The larger the display is, the fuzzier will the small icons be.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> Are we not nerds? Yes, and nerds demands nerdy icons!

well, i hate to break it to you, but ...... most of our users aren't nerds, and not all (or even perhaps most) nerds like (let alone demand) "nerdy" icons.

the defaults are for the majority, the mainstream. you can find alternatives in kdeartwork, including ones that probably work as "nerdy".

> "Italian design"

ah, so you aren't refering to the artists involved, some of whom are actually Italian.

> Stupid canucks

indeed, screw them. especially the ones who actually have a clue about the topics at hand. damn them!

> You avoided to diss tackat and Everaldo

why would i? this isn't about taking sides; i don't have to "diss" one person to applaud another. tackat and everaldo are both good artists.

> The larger the display is

to get nerdy here ;) it's really the higher the resolution the fuzzier they'd be. and at a fairly decent resolution here they look just fine. but hey, being a canuck maybe i'm just not capable of being nerdy enough to notice these fine points ;)

by max (not verified)

Arrgh, good looking mac icons, shodder.

Hope the good old KDE2 icons will still be provided.

I wonder why no one aims for the enlightment look

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> Hope the good old KDE2 icons will still be provided.

look in kdeartwork/IconThemes.

> I wonder why no one aims for the enlightment look

probably because so few people actually like it.

p.s. thanks for joining the positivity brigade.

by Luis (not verified)

Hey! I didn't expect that kind of trolling from you!
Enlightenment Desktop Release 17 is amazing (in a lot of aspects better than KDE). People dosen't know it, that's a different history.

(I love e17 mixed with KDE apps)