KDE Commit-Digest for 18th November 2007

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Calculator and Show Desktop Plasmoid, units conversion and contacts "runners", enhanced composite-based effects, a "dashboard" view and applet hover handles in Plasma. Updated artwork for "about" pages (like the one present in Konqueror upon application startup). Support for quick user switching in Kickoff. Continued development progress in KDevelop 4. Work begins on resurrecting KEduca for the KDE 4.1 timeframe. New imagery for KTuberling and KMahjongg. Foundations laid for "undo close tab" in Konqueror. OSS device hotplugging in KMix. A bandwidth scheduler plugin in KTorrent. Interface work, including per-protocol UI specification in Kopete. Hardware database for an enhanced audio device experience in Phonon. Continued KDE 4 porting in K3b, with the integration of Solid and Phonon for device and media management. KDE 3.96 tagged, comprising Release Candidate 2 of the development platform (hopefully final), and Beta 5 (or Release Candidate 1) of the Desktop.

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Comments

by Carutsu (not verified)

Yay finally Commit Diggest time!

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Yes, thanks Danny!

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

On Arch Linux, I've been using KDEmod, which I love. I used those patches on Sabayon and Gentoo as well. Will any of these improvements ever find there way to KDE 4?

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

what improvements are these?

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

http://kdemod.ath.cx/features.html

# The pertty/KIP patchset, enabling the following features:

* A translucent selection rectangle, e.g. rubberband
* Rounded icon titles when icons are selected
* An improved konqueror sidebar, which saves its settings per profile
* The ability to open a new tab in konqueror that opens the default home page instead of a blank page
* A smooth logout fade effect

# SuSE's Kickoff menu (patched for Arch Linux, optional package)
# Support for LUKS-encrypted volumes in KDE
# The Kopete Reloading Kit
# Kopete support for uvc webcams
# Logout Dialog Theme Support (ported to latest KDE)
# Software Drop Shadows for KWin (ported to latest KDE)
# Dunkelsterns improved Icon Execute Feedback effect
# Selis improved KDE Xinerama support
# A patch for Kmix to toggle muting with the middle mouse button
# KDesktop transparency support

# Various security patches & fixes from SVN that did not made it into the actual KDE release
# Various patches for kdebase/kdelibs to improve the work with Kickoff and its beagle integration
# Session manager improvements for Beryl/Compiz
# An improved session manager (lock/logout) kicker applet
# Superkaramba does not depend on XMMS anymore
# Less verbal kdesu dialogs (still shows all important information)
# Less verbal kwallet dialogs (still shows all important information)
# Merged stop/reload and viewmode buttons for konqueror to save some screenspace
# Improved sorting of systray icons
# Much more patches and stuff, just take a look at our svn repository...
# And at least... A customized theme based on the domino widget style

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

* A translucent selection rectangle, e.g. rubberband

done

* Rounded icon titles when icons are selected

done, they even animate in an dout

* An improved konqueror sidebar, which saves its settings per profile

not done

* The ability to open a new tab in konqueror that opens the default home page instead of a blank page

not usre about this one.

* A smooth logout fade effect

done

# SuSE's Kickoff menu (patched for Arch Linux, optional package)

done

# Support for LUKS-encrypted volumes in KDE

solid supports encrypted volumes

# The Kopete Reloading Kit

dunno what that is =/

# Kopete support for uvc webcams

solid supports webcam discovery, and kopete is using that now afaik, however we're bound to what v4l can do. so not sure if that fixes things for you or not

# Logout Dialog Theme Support (ported to latest KDE)

the logout dialog is now themable, yes.

# Software Drop Shadows for KWin (ported to latest KDE)

done

# Dunkelsterns improved Icon Execute Feedback effect

not sure what that is

# Selis improved KDE Xinerama support

should be in since he's the kwin maintainer ;)

# A patch for Kmix to toggle muting with the middle mouse button

the kmix applet won't be there until 4.1

# KDesktop transparency support

kdesktop transparency? transparent to ...? (and by transparent we're actually meaning transluscent i take it0)

# Various security patches & fixes from SVN that did not made it into the actual KDE release

obviously those would be in trunk/

# Various patches for kdebase/kdelibs to improve the work with Kickoff and its beagle integration

would have to be more specific as to what those are, but the kde4 kickoff menu is no longer hard coded to beagle

# Session manager improvements for Beryl/Compiz

not sure

# An improved session manager (lock/logout) kicker applet

what's improved about it?

# Superkaramba does not depend on XMMS anymore

that's a packaging issue

# Less verbal kdesu dialogs (still shows all important information)

i don't think we've done this in trunk/ yet. it's on my todo, and the generic Qt4 based animated hide/show widget is a step in the right direction (danimo did the original work on that)... unfortunately there are only so many usability and pixel crazy developers around kde, so our time is already spread thin.

# Less verbal kwallet dialogs (still shows all important information)

see above

# Merged stop/reload and viewmode buttons for konqueror to save some screenspace

some merging has already been done; not stop/reload though (personally i have issues with that one, but whatever)

# Improved sorting of systray icons

honestly, i refuse to improve anything in the systray beyond where it is until the systray protocol in x11 is fixed to be something that isn't brain damaged. i tried a few years ago, but honestly most of the people who need to be onside for such big changes are way too shortsighted to even begin to understand the issues. thankfully Seli is not one of those people, but what i said about people who are forward thinking being rare and therefore our time being scant applies there as well; but yeah, Seli should have somethign someday (he and i sat down last year in norway and hashed it all out; i'm happy with what came out of that =). oh, and rasterman from enlightenment also gets it on this point.

# Much more patches and stuff, just take a look at our svn repository...

lacking time; why not try and triage the patches upstream? e.g. help us help you.

# And at least... A customized theme based on the domino widget style

oxy has a lot in common with domino when it comes to clean looks and what not. so i consider this one "done" too

so.. how are we doing for a dot-oh release? =)

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Honestly, I assumed the devs were aware of the KDEmod team and their patches.

I'm not sure why none of this is upstream, but they have a SVN repository.

http://www.kdemod.ath.cx/svn/

by Jan (not verified)

Hi there,

most patches we are using in KDEmod are from Gentoos KIP project or kde-look or other distros or just fix Arch specific stuff. The most work over the last months has been done on the theme-side as i simply cannot stand the default KDE3 look anymore :-) And our users seem to love the theme, i see many screenshots around with our default settings... Also consider that Arch is a very small distribution and we are only 2 people who package (split), modify and write patches. So far, we have a good workflow with me packaging, customizing and testing etc and Dunkelstern writing patches and packaging for x86_64, and we intend to continue this with KDE4 :-) And we are open for everyone who wants to help us, just to say that...

In the last months, we tried to patch up KDE3 even more, and Dunkelstern seems to be _very_ capable in writing eyecandy patches from my point of view. However, time is a factor, so our output is limited (although we could do a lot more, the motivation is there, absolutely)...

Here are the "KDEmod"-patches that got created so far:

Icon Execute Feedback: This is the icon effect also used in Kubuntu. Its nearly the same effect as in OS X, where the icons zoom and fade when you click on them:

http://kdemod.ath.cx/svn/trunk/kdelibs/03_dunkelstern-execute_feedback.p...
http://kdemod.ath.cx/svn/trunk/kdebase/19_dunkelstern-execute_feedback.p...

Shiny Kicker: This patch is not finished now. It will give you the ability to assign a pixmap to kickers translucency and add some additional filtering like blur. Its still a work-in-progress and has some bugs (Dunkelstern is currently fixing the patch, a first version should be there soon):

Here is a small teaser: http://kdemod.ath.cx/temp/shiny.png
(I dont want to show a complete screenshot because there are still some rendering/redraw issues :-) )

However, as kicker is gone in KDE4, this will be a KDE3-only thing...

Then, a patch for this issue: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=110318
It seems to work for us and our users, so far we had no problems with it. Its also posted on the KDE bugtracker:

http://kdemod.ath.cx/svn/trunk/kdelibs/04_dunkelstern-async-configfile.p...
http://kdemod.ath.cx/svn/trunk/kdebase/22_dunkelstern-async-history.patch

@Aaron: You can find the kopete reloading kit here: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Kopete+Reloading+Kit?content=49765 . It adds the ability to use themes on the contact list.

The kdesktop-transparency patch adds the ability to make the desktop wallpaper translucent when using compiz (so you can see the cube through it). Its located here: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/KDesktop+transparency+support?c...

The "improved" lock/logout session applet is just drawn prettier, e.g. the buttons look a little bit better. Its a patch from the openSUSE guys if i remember correctly...

The patches written by Dunkelstern were also posted on the KDE bugtracker, and the execute feedback one seems to be widely used among other distros already...

And at last i want to thank all the people who are working on KDE, its a real pleasure to work with your software. And from what i have seen of KDE4, this will be even better in the future :-)

Greetings

Jan

by Benoit Jacob (not verified)

Hi Jan,

You seem to have many ideas about how to improve KDE. I think that you should proactively send your idea to the relevant KDE mailing lists or to [email protected] if you can't find a more specificly suitable list. Otherwise your ideas might be forgotten!

Benoit

by winter (not verified)

Many KDE devs don't like a lot of "great new ideas". I understand that. It's good to KISS. I guess a sort of experimental or modded version of KDE is a good thing for those of us who like to have some slick features that devs want to keep out of the "vanilla" version. After all, many distros mod KDE. I actually happen to like that. Because up until recently, KDE has had a few rough edges from an OSes GUI point of view. Or course that is to be expected. So the mods and tune ups are pretty cool IMHO.

Of course KDE4 is supposed to be a whole new deal. So let's see what apps can be made.

by Sebastian (not verified)

Just take a look at the pictures:

Desktop transparency support (yes, it is transparency!):
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/KDesktop+transparency+support?c...

Icon execute feedback:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=52994

The Kopete Reloading Kit:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=49765
Seems to be a GUI improvement (themable cointact lists etc.)

I personally agree with the domino style. Though Oxygen is very stylish, I still prefer Domino.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I love Domino. Will it be adapted for KDE 4?

by Anon (not verified)
by logixoul (not verified)

Not by the original author. If you port it, that would be awesome.

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

This is yet another reason why I really like open source. How often do you see developers take the time to answer such questions elsewhere?

Thanks a lot to all KDE devs for creating what looks to become a great new release!

Also thanks for yet another nice digest!

by Kevin Krammer (not verified)

# # Superkaramba does not depend on XMMS anymore

# that's a packaging issue

Actually not as easy.

XMMS support is a build time option, e.g. havng libxmms as an optional build dependency.
Packagers could just choose between supporting or not supporting XMMS, not something like doing it as a recommended package.

I personally wrote a patch for the Debian packagers so it can runtime detect libxmms availability by dlopen'ing it.

by Jan (not verified)

Well, we are using your patch :) Maybe the explanation on our site needs a little update...

by Diederik van de... (not verified)

> http://kdemod.ath.cx/features.html

What I don't get about this... what's stopping these people to get such enhancements in KDE itself? In the proprietary world people need to have separate add-ons because the original product can't be modified. In the open world such limitation does not apply. So why don't these people get a KDE SVN account, and get the changes right in KDE?

Is is some kind of big-wall to enter KDE, or is there a pride involved to keep such a patchlist for ones selves? I really wonder what it is, but it should be fixed IMHO.

by Jan (not verified)

Most of these patches are already available since a long time, and some also never got accepted (the rubberband patches for examples, because qt has to be patched for them too). If i remember correctly, most of Gentoos KIP patches were posted on the KDE mailing lists years ago, but they got rejected because of various issues... I can only say that these patches are working _for_years_ now without problems for many people, so i would definitely be glad if they are included in a KDE 3.5.9 or something... (Check out the http://gentoo-xeffects.org wiki, they have a svn repo with their patches)

Then there are patches made by people who are working on KDE (the openSUSE and Kubuntu guys for example), but they dont seem to have any interest to include them into KDE itself. And i like most of the stuff they produce, otherwise it wouldnt be included in KDEmod :-)

Also, the patches that are made by us either got posted on the KDE bugtracker or are available on kde-apps, so i dont understand the "pride" or "big-wall" thing you are talking about... The list on our site is only there to let people check whats included and give further background info... And this is something no one else does, they all use a lot of patches but no one (= users) knows what they do or who has written them initially... We simply want to be informative what users get if they install KDEmod :-)

Jan

by mangus (not verified)

great work guys, kde devs and kdemodders too....
I enjoy kdemod and kde4 very much!

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

no big wall, these patches often don't get into KDE because 3.5.x is supposed to be stable. Some might get in, some day, but that'll take some time.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Are you suggesting people haven't been contributing improvements during the 3.5 cycle?

From 3.5 to 3.5.8, there have been numerous new features, improvements, etc.

I'm not sure why these patches specifically have been left out.

by Skeith (not verified)

That explanation of Containment sure cleared a few things up on just how Plasma works. Now that 4.0 looms the development pace seems to be getting faster every day, hats off to the KDE devs.

Commit-Digests never disappoint, thanks for all the hard work putting these together.

by Sutoka (not verified)

The explanation of Containment was very nice, and the thought of being able to nicely bring the desktop into the foreground (along with the icons!) may actually cause me to (possibly ;) use the Run Dialog less (then again, KRunner may cause me to use it more... which creates quite a conundrum!)

>Commit-Digests never disappoint, thanks for all the hard work putting these together.

I can't second this enough!

by david (not verified)

the errors:

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by Danny Allen (not verified)

Fixed, thanks!

Now that the fire is out, i'll pass out (or go to sleep :)).

Danny

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I think it was worth it, though it was probably pretty expensive to hire Tom Green to do the Plasma screen-cast.

by Marketing guru (not verified)

Well, Chuck Norris was already taken, so Plasma got the next best thing ;)

hahaha thumbs up!

by Leo S (not verified)

Thanks for the digest Danny!

The plasma video is pretty cool, lots of effects I'm looking forward to..

My only wish is that someone would make that volume on-screen display pretty (end of the video). It's still just as terribly ugly as in KDE3 and really no longer fits.

The rest looks top notch. :)

by Anon (not verified)

"My only wish is that someone would make that volume on-screen display pretty (end of the video). It's still just as terribly ugly as in KDE3 and really no longer fits."

http://vir.homelinux.org/blog/index.php?/archives/73-volume-change-popup...

by Leo S (not verified)

Yeah, doesn't look like it'll be in KDE though. It doesn't need to even be that fancy, even if it was resized to be not massive it would be 100 times better. The amarok OSD volume is nice and discrete for instance.

by Level 1 (not verified)

That is the kde 3 volume control. Aaron was running his screencast from within an embedded X session called Zephyr (at least I assume). The kde 4 one will certianly be different, if not better.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

full disclosure: i was running a full kde4 env, but recordMyDestkop and opengl based compositing don't get along. that and my display resolution is a bit big for these things.

so i turn off kwin composite, start a *second* kde4 session in a xephyr window, turn composite on in that session and record that window.

freaking cool.

and yeah, that sound control popup is the kde3 one. i have kde3 also installed on my devel system so any apps for which there aren't kde4 versions installed just get filled in by the kde3 versions. the volume popup is one such app that i don't have the kde4 version for on that system.

kde3 apps do look like kde3 apps, as you can see. but they run perfectly. i've used kde3 version of konqueror, kaffeine, ktorrent and others in my kde4 session (which i have been running as my full desktop session for a while now) and it works impressively well. as in.. it just works.

by Anonymous (not verified)

They are really good and oxygenish. But IMHO the black plasmoid-like rectangle in the center looks too contrast and unnatural in otherwise low-contrast konqueror window. It attracts all attention from other important parts of the window. Probably the same plasmoid-like border but light-grey background will be better ?

Thanks a lot for all you hard-work which made KDE4 possible !

by logixoul (not verified)

it's planned to eventually looks like this, btw:
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9743/bg3tf9.png

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

wow ;-)

by dooberry (not verified)

One thing I was wondering from the screencast is how easy it'd be to set up application launchers in the container. So instead of having a quick-launch bar, you just bring the container to the front and have a grid of your selected applications to choose from, in nice big icons.

by Tom (not verified)

Yeah, exactly, just get rid of the popup type of reaction of the k-button, and put the thing that pops up(kickoff) in a plasmoid itself. now the placing of the kickoff popup is apparently always above the k-button, even when adding a k-button plasmoid and moving it to the top. That way, your menu is always "open", and you put it anywhere you like, even rotate it etc, and plasma does all the layout. You can apparently easily make the plasmoids visible, so it would be very quick to use, and you don't have to start over from the beginning when selecting an application, it would still be open from last time you used it. That sure would be nice.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

unfortunately, kickoff's menu won't be available on the plasma canvas until kde 4.1 when we can use qt 4.4's widgets-on-canvas support. what we have in 4.0 is just the basics (buttons, line edits, etc..) so we could get going.

but yes, in 4.1 what you describe will totally be possible.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

i think it will be really interesting to see how people use plasma. i honestly can only guess and the coming years will provide the real answers.

the goal is to make the desktop useful again, and i expect people will find all sorts of interesting ways to take advantage of the functionality plasma offers towards fulfilling that goal.

the idea of launchers on the desktop being easily accessible like this is one of the possible use cases we've considered. i think more than a few people will find it useful ;)

remember that for plasma, 4.0 is just the skeleton upon which we will drape the real flesh in 4.1 and beyond. i hope that, along with the rest of the plasma team, we will dazzle people anew with every release. i already have big plans for 4.1, but it's feeling so good to get this close to 4.0 =)

by kde.fan.from.brasil (not verified)

Why there are so many borders is the every Dolphin panel? It's a (Oxygen) style problem or a application one?

Look at the screenshots, the places panel have a border around it, the name 'places' (and the buttons) are almost over this line. And appears to me that every panel have it's border, and vertical and horizontal "splitters". The information panel (2nd screenshot) it's pretty overcrowded, so full of stuff that it's difficult to find the information that you need.

http://img164.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=30400_7_122_1144lo.jpg
http://img192.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=30406_sreencast_122_505lo.jpg

Please remove all that borders you can. Sorry to say that, but in this shape Dolphin looks a lot like a KDE 3 application running a modded Plastik theme.

Another problem is the green progress bar. It's pretty strange, too big, with a weird proportion. I suggest that you create a small contour around it and make it a little smaller (in the vertical).

Thanks and sorry for my bad english.

I don't think there are borders enough. The borders help separate distinct functionality and interfaces. The lack of borders between menus and toolbars is bad enough, because they operate completely different.

by kde.fan.from.brasil (not verified)

I don't agree.

Look at the MacOS 10 UI screenshots below. They prove that a cleaner UI, with a lot less borders and splitters, works very well, better than any Linux UI (including the Oxygen one).

http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macosx103

well, there is a border around the places and one around the main view - just like in dolphin.

actually, borders are used quite extensivly on osx. though their theme uses very thin borders, which makes it hard to resize them.

http://img.presence-pc.com/news/l/e/leopard_scrn.JPG

by kde.fan.from.brasil (not verified)

Yeah, you are correct, Leopard now have a new look.

by MamiyaOtaru (not verified)

That wasn't a shot of Leopard.

by kde.fan.from.brasil (not verified)

No?! :-(

Sorry for the mistake. Leopard screenshots are in the link below:

http://www.apple.com/br/macosx/features/desktop.html

by anonymous coward (not verified)

+1

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