10 Comments

1. 

   Greetings. I write you because I discovered recently how Lancelot fulfills now, with KDE 4.5, 99% of my dreams about an application launcher. I have a pair of wishes for it, that shouldn’t be hard to implement.

   1. I like the multiicon Lancelot implementation (four icons), but I really want to configure those icons and set non-square icons.

   2. Related with that, I have a touchscreen. And Lancelot is, in the quad-icon configuration, not touchscreen friendly. When I have a menu unfolded, and I try to press with my finger the icon for another menu, the menu closes. The behaviour I want is: I press another icon and that menu replaces what I have (the same behaviour I have if I roll over with the mouse, or press Control-1 to Control-4 in the menu). Of course, if I click outside, the menu shall close.

   3. The thing I hate the most about Lancelot is a trivial one. When I unfold the menu, there are 6 or 7 pixels of space between the border of the screen and the menu, and almost the same space between the launcher button and the panel. How can you reduce both spaces to zero? I know I can resize the Lancelot menu, but Lancelot doesn’t remember my position settings when I want to place it next to the border of my screen.

   That, Ivan, is the 1% remaining. Can you do it?

   Comment by Alejandro Nova — 11 June 2010 @ 07:00

2. 

   @Alejandro Nova: Hi, glad to hear you like it.

   1. I know some people would like this, but I don’t expect it anytime soon – it just doesn’t fit the rest of plasma.

   2. This one is great that you mentioned it – haven’t tested the /multiicon/ mode on a touch screen – will fix it asap.

   3. Unfortunately, that one I’m not able to fix – I’ve received complaints on that one a couple of times. The space depends on plasma theme used and I can’t really do anything about it.

   Comment by Ivan Čukić — 11 June 2010 @ 21:31

3. 

   @Ivan Čukić: Ivan, thank you for answering. Detailed answer.

   Point 1. Thanks for telling me it won’t be in, although non square buttons would allow us to have a clearer indication of which menu is selected (I was thinking about a mini Kickoff display on those icons). But you are using Plasma themes, so it can’t be.

   Point 2. Thanks!

   Point 3. I think this deserves to be reported as a bug. I tested with Composite disabled and enabled, and the strange thing is: Lancelot draws well, without any blank space between screen or panel and itself, if I have Composite disabled. Lancelot draws a thicker border instead. If I resize the border with Composite off and enable Composite, Lancelot will remember my settings and the menu will draw itself strangely. You can see what I’m trying to say here.

   Lancelot 1: Composite disabled. Lancelot shows a thick border.
   http://yfrog.com/2tlancelot1p

   Lancelot 2: Lancelot resized. Lancelot has a normal border and 0 space between itself and the border of the screen.
   http://yfrog.com/2mlancelot2p

   Lancelot 3: Composite reenabled. Border isn’t drawed and Lancelot looks exactly like “Lancelot 2″ without a border.
   http://yfrog.com/jllancelot3p

   Comment by Alejandro Nova — 17 June 2010 @ 20:30

4. 

   @Alejandro Nova: “allow us to have a clearer indication of which menu is selected” – can you elaborate – if there is a reason I don’t see, maybe a deviation from other plasma-stuff is in order

   If it is only about making the active tab visually distinct, what importance is the non-square shape to the cause?

   “I think this deserves to be reported as a bug” – well… it is not really a bug – if a theme doesn’t have a transparent border, all will be ok (that’s the reason it works as expected without compositing)

   p.s. The screenshots expose a /real/* bug that I haven’t fixed yet – on theme switching (and on switching composite on/off) I’m not relayouting the window so it can lead to artifacts like lists going off the window like in your third screenshot.

   So far, I haven’t dealt with it simply because it is of a very low importance.

   * /real/ as in /something that can be dealt with/

   Comment by Ivan Čukić — 17 June 2010 @ 23:43

5. 

   @Ivan Čukić: Quick mockup illustrating what I want.

   http://yfrog.com/5zkdedevp

   Comment by Alejandro Nova — 18 June 2010 @ 17:36

6. 

   @Alejandro Nova: You’ll need a space to wrap the indication around the square icon, but you need the space to be clickable for usability purposes. So, at least, you’ll need non-square buttons and a different background for the active one.

   I thought it couldn’t be done without non-square icons, but if it can be done without them, I’ll be fine. AFAIK non-square buttons, unlike non-square icons, don’t break Plasma.

   I was thinking at first about doing text-icons like “Menu”, “Places”, “Communicate” and “Documents” for these buttons. It would be cool ;).

   Comment by Alejandro Nova — 18 June 2010 @ 17:51

7. 

   @Alejandro Nova: Ok, now I get the ideas. For the specific one of having a background for the selected item, a non-square button is not really needed… and that one is definitely going to be implemented.

   But I’ll think about the rest of them as well. No promises though

   Comment by Ivan Čukić — 19 June 2010 @ 16:48

8. 

   @Ivan Čukić: Thanks for your answers, Ivan. We all can make together a better KDE for all of us, programmers and users like me.

   About the menu, I’ve workarounded the issue selecting Oxywin Dialog Background with the Advanced Theme Selector, keeping Air, and at the same time filing a bug against Artwork (because it’s a bug, but definitely not about Lancelot ;))

   Comment by Alejandro Nova — 20 June 2010 @ 07:15

9. [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ivan Čukić, Ian Cylkowski. Ian Cylkowski said: RT @ivan_cukic: New blog post: Lancelot and KMail in 4.5 http://ivan.fomentgroup.org/blog/2010/05/28/lancelot-and-kmail-in-4-5/ (win!) [...]

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