Jul
10
2009
Lancelot 1.7 screencast (KDE 4.3)
I’ve realized that the one and only screencast of Lancelot I made was even before the 1.0 was released. So, I’ve decided to make a new one. This cast is meant as an introduction to Lancelot, rather than to show the new features.
Unfortunately the recordmydesktop somehow blocked drag and drop, so the Parts applet couldn’t really be demonstrated.
So, here it is:
35MB OGV file (full resolution): http://www.sendspace.com/file/1aih65
(I have no idea for how long the file will be available on the server)
And the obligatory YouTube* entry (I suggest watching the HD version):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSwX7WMYCH4
* For some strange reason, I wasn’t able to upload the video to Vimeo…
Cool to hear your voice for the first time.
I don’t have much more to say. It was a nice screencast; other than the activity switching trouble, everything flowed well. The speaking made it much more interesting (compared to just reading the subtitles). Good job!
Comment by Hans — 10 July 2009 @ 15:01
Did the UI hang when you tried uploading to Vimeo? It did for me in both Firefox and Konqi. Turned out it was a Flash bug and I had to use the basic upload interface at:
http://vimeo.com/upload/video/basic
Which worked.
Comment by Elvis Stansvik — 10 July 2009 @ 15:24
@Elvis Stansvik: Yeah, it did hang up a couple of times. Thanks for the pointer about the basic uploader.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 10 July 2009 @ 17:56
Very nice. Lancelot looks very underrated. But why is Lancelot’s menu first painted in white? I am surprised that you also find that in your screencast, not only with my slow machine. Because the Lancelot menu is generally dark you always get a flicker, when you launch the menu. Somehow you need to test run the menu popup delays, it does not “feel right” in terms of responsiveness to me. I am very curious, so I will have a look at the Lanzelot source code and default settings. Just some finetuning.
Comment by André — 10 July 2009 @ 23:45
@André: I agree, this happens to me as well, even on machines with capable and supported video cards. For some reason though, it hadn’t been bothering me as much until I read this comment
Comment by maniacmusician — 11 July 2009 @ 01:43
@André: It’s a problem with compositing that will hopefully be fixed with Qt 4.6 (I haven’t checked but I think the EWMH syncing will fix it). What happens is that Qt creates the window before actually painting its contents so KWin ends up displaying what was in the graphics memory at the time (It’s sometimes even garbage if you’re using an older version of Kubuntu or Fedora).
Comment by Lucas Murray — 11 July 2009 @ 03:54
Awesome wallpaper! Could you please share it? Would it suit my 1680×1050 resolution? Thx in advance!
Comment by Andreas Demmer — 11 July 2009 @ 06:52
@André: OK, you’ve got the answer from THE KWin man, so I have nothing to add to that.
Though I don’t know what you meant by “underrated”.
@Andreas Demmer: Yeah, making the /other/ resolutions and posting it somewhere is on my TODO list (that is, on my Remember The Milk list).
I’ll post the news on the blog so that you don’t miss it.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 11 July 2009 @ 08:13
@Ivan Čukić: Thx a lot!
Comment by Andreas Demmer — 11 July 2009 @ 12:06
Nice screencast. And no need to say you’re sorry for “not perfect english.” It’s not my mother tongue either and I understood everything so it’s good enough
Comment by Anonymous coward — 11 July 2009 @ 18:06
Hello Ivan!!!
How do you make Lancelot transparent? I have effects enabled. I have transparency in every application that supports it but Lancelot.
Thanks!
Comment by nbensa — 12 July 2009 @ 21:47
@nbensa: The most probable problem (known in kubuntu backported packaged) is that Lancelot is compiled without libXcomposite and other needed libraries, thus making it not-composite-enabled.
This is not the first time packagers (of any distro) have done that. Write to the packager of your distro.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 12 July 2009 @ 21:52
With Lancelot Parts, is there any way the text color can be changed? It remains one of the most useful widgets on kde, however on a dark background image, The text becomes unreadable.
Comment by Saleel Velankar — 13 July 2009 @ 01:36
@Saleel Velankar: It is fixed for the final 4.3 (and the trunk) – I’ve just made a patch. The switch from oxygen to air as the default theme really screwed up a few things in the Plasma world
BTW, to answer the colour changing question: The colours are defined in the theme. The only way to change them is to change the theme.config file in the respective theme.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 13 July 2009 @ 10:36
what is plasma theme?
Comment by matt — 17 July 2009 @ 13:52
@matt: It is Slim Glow
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 17 July 2009 @ 15:30
Have it installed in KDE4.3, and really like it. Nice going. We are considering adopting it for the next release of MEPIS Linux.
Are the top 4 menu entries (Documents, Contacts, etc.) editable? More generally, is there a document that describes the possibilities for altering ~/.ke34/share/config/lancelotrc?
Comment by jerry — 9 August 2009 @ 17:10
@jerry: No, the sections are fixed. I’m planing to make it more customizable at one point, but that will not be anytime soon.
There is no document describing the options, but since there are not that many, I’ll enlist them here:
[Main]
mailPlugins and imPlugins, when set, replace the default implementation of KMail and Kopete integration with some custom Plasma data engine that is compatible with Lancelot. A special value is “disabled”. (see this and this)
width and height – the size of the window
activationMethod – which method is used (see the configuration dialogue for options)
appbrowserColumnLimitted – whether the application browser limits the columns to two
appbrowserReset – whether the application browser should be reset to show back the favourites on menu open
systemButton1Action, systemButton2Action, systemButton3Action – what action to show on the bottom buttons.
enableKeepOpen – keeps open the menu until it looses focus (otherwise the menu is closed the moment the user clicks to start an app)
enableUsageStatistics – self explanatory
[Favorites]
FavoriteURLs list of .desktop files to show in favorites.
That is all I can think of at the moment.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 9 August 2009 @ 20:02
Hi, in KDE 4.4 beta 2 with Qt 4.6 using Lancelot 1.8 I think, when I open Lancelot, the white windows still appears.
Isn’t this a problem in Lancelot? I think this because no other Plasma widget or Qt app does this in my pc.
Comment by KDS — 1 January 2010 @ 00:31
@KDS: See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218773
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 1 January 2010 @ 00:39
Hey, thanks for your work!
Anything new about the Wallpaper? I really like it!
Comment by Jan — 14 February 2010 @ 14:53
@Jan: Yes, the wallpaper is available at kde-look – http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=108269
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 15 February 2010 @ 09:19