Lancelot alpha 2
Just joking, I haven’t introduced a proper versioning, but the current state could be dubbed as “alpha 2″ (yes, I took the version from amarokers, but have no cute child-knight to show you to compete with their little wolf).
I got a bit of a development boost by Beojan Stanislaus who sent me a patch for a bug in the launcher applet concerning the layout and the size of the icons. After that I just couldn’t stop tinkering with it.
I’ll get into making the configuration interface soon, and then the polishing will begin.
I will skip doing the plug-in system for the first stable release, and will probably not succeed in replacing the current list widgets with a work-in-progress ones that will have real scrollbars and keyboard input support. (yes, Lancelot can not be manipulated by using only the keyboard at the moment, but that *is* the most important feature that I’m planing to add)
P.S. Are there any objections to make the “sections in the panel” instead of “one icon launches the menu with sections inside” as the default?
“P.S. Are there any objections to make the “sections in the panel” instead of “one icon launches the menu with sections inside” as the default?”
Like gnome?
Comment by Sparrow — 30 July 2008 @ 00:20
How exactly the Application area behaves? I mean, when you hover/click on them, submenus appear like normal K-Menu or the panel gets replaced by submenu, like KBFX or Kickoff?
Comment by Vijay Patil — 30 July 2008 @ 05:41
Well, at the moment, I have two Lancelots on the desktop (http://white-dawn.deviantart.com/art/KDE-4-1-91144891) – “one button” in the top left corner, and “section buttons” in the middle bottom panel. I use the bottom one much more… but then again, most people have one panel setups. We’ll see
Vijay Patil
I’ll make some screenshots, so that you can see.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 30 July 2008 @ 07:03
Don’t take it as an offense but… doesn’t Lancelot look like… Windows XP start menu? Favorites on the right side, applications (although not behind a “All programs” entry) on the right, session management on the bottom…
Comment by Vide — 30 July 2008 @ 07:06
Well, I can’t say that there are no similarities – it *is* a two column layout (or when the categories are shown inside the menu – a two and a half column layout) – but the behaviour and feel are completely different. (or to be blunt – Lancelot is useful
In order to make something that doesn’t look like anything else, I would have to skip one-column (Kickoff, KMenu, win95), two-column (XP, KBFX) and three-column (Tasty menu, Gimmie). So I would be left with 4 columns which is a bit too much
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 30 July 2008 @ 07:20
Looks great! Even though I am actually quite fond of kickoff I am definitely going to switch to lancelot.
Comment by Linus — 30 July 2008 @ 07:43
Does anyone knows, how to install Lancelot under opensuse 11? I tried to download the source in order to compile it from http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdeplasma-addons/applets/lancelot/ but it seems that I have to download every file in every folder separately, which would take much time. Is there a repository for opensuse or a possibility to download the lancelot files alltogehter? Or can anyone send me Lancelot in an archive or something?
Back to topic: I miss the fact, that Lancelot adopts itself to the current Plasma-theme on the machine. Also I found now the menu look a bit messy with no real separator for sections like Contacts, Favourites, Apps, Storage Device, etc..
It would be nice, if the menu would look a bit more tidied up.
Nevertheless, I can’t wait to see the first finished version of L. BTW: Why is only one developer on this thing? Wouldn’t it take far less time to develope L. if there would be more people working on it?
Comment by Burke — 30 July 2008 @ 11:31
Thanks
@Burke
1. Install subversion client on your machine (if you don’t have it), and run
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdeplasma-addons/applets/lancelot
You need KDE 4.1 development libraries and PIM suite in order to build it.
2. Concerning the theme, Plasma themes don’t contain enough elements needed for all Lancelot widgets. But, when a Plasma theme provides those needed images, it will look as it should.
I don’t understand the ‘separator for sections’ part. If you are referring to the /new look/ of sections inside lists, it is only temporary.
3. Well, it is because nobody has joined in the development yet
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 30 July 2008 @ 12:54
@Ivan Čukić
, so how do you want to implement it in a one panel configuration? 
Sections seems to be a good solution but i use a one panel configuration, more space on the screen
Comment by Sparrow — 30 July 2008 @ 20:37
Well, we blew this out of proportion. I was just asking what should be the /default/ configuration. Not obligatory one
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 30 July 2008 @ 20:53
I object to making “sections in panel” the default.
I think GNOME works with that method because they have a textual description. If all you have are Icons, a new user would find it hard to understand what each of the icons mean, so they would find a single icon, where it is obvious that it launches the menu, with sections inside,which have textual descriptions, easier than having seperate icons for each section.
Comment by Beojan — 5 August 2008 @ 10:58