Ivan Čukić

Response to “Lancelot, KDE and Gnome” (showed in Aaron-colour :) )

admin — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:37:07 +0000

Well, this is one of the Aaron-style “explain to the unbelievers why they are wrong”. This is in response to http://blog.kov.eti.br/?p=19 (or you can see the translated version)

Disclaimer: I have nothing against Gnome, I am mentioning it since it was used as a comparison in the original post.

Well, as all trolls on the internet, you have a couple of things obviously not clear to you.

Delusion 1. KDE is vapourware because Lancelot is not finished
First of all, Lancelot is project in the late phase of development (like amarok2) - usable but not finished. See the definition of vapourware if you don’t see where you are mistaken.

And, not to mention, that Lancelot was not intended to be a part of KDE’s base packages. It’s like saying that Gnome is vapourware because Gimmie is not finished.
Delusion 2. KDE is copying Windows (again, example is Lancelot)
Well, as I see it, you either haven’t used the Windows’ menu, or you haven’t used Lancelot (I bet on the later). Apart from being a /menu/, what are the similarities? Comparing Lancelot to Kickoff or Gimmie (for Gnome) would be more accurate… although still incorrect.

Besides Lancelot’s “copying” Windows what arguments do you have that other parts of KDE’s desktop are copying it?
Delusion 3. KDE stopped focussing on the desktop, and went to develop frameworks
Developing a complete desktop environment (with a lot more high quality applications than Gnome has for instance) have to begin with building a solid set of frameworks so that later development of actual applications would be easier, and that applications reach new levels of integration. (compare the so called Gnome Office with KOffice)

KDE 4.0 had most of the frameworks finished, and 4.1 is being built on that. If you are saying that KDE is still ignoring the desktop after the improvements in Plasma that will be in 4.1, than you’re either blind or just don’t want to see.

Conclusion: I was hoping that Aaron will be the only one that has to deal with persons like you, but, apparently (and unfortunately), I was not right.

Missed the 4.1 train

admin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:09:47 +0000

Still not there

It is time to admit it - Lancelot will not be ready for 4.1. (like you didn’t see that coming)

I know I promised that it will be in a working shape by 4.o, and finished for 4.1, but there were a couple of obstacles for that goal.

First, there is the fact that Decibel and Akonadi are not finished yet so Lancelot is not able to show the Contacts section. This was the main reason L was not released for 4.o, and still is a show-stopper. Unfortunately it is not the only one.
Another thing are the problems introduced by the migration to WoC. It took me a lot of time to port everything to /new Plasma/ and there still are some glitches (mostly in the applet, not in the application) that I’m trying to fix.

Well, that is really all…

So, where are we?

The current state of L is not at all that bad when I come to think of it. I have started using it as my main ALI again, and I even use it instead of KRunner for most of the time. Most of the things that worked before WoC transition, work now as well - the application browser, system and documents sections and the KRunner integration.

(Currently) Known issues

It crashes sometimes when browsing through the applications - currently under investigation
It is uglier than before (lowest priority problem at the moment)
It is not configurable (except for applet)
Contacts section doesn’t work - under construction
Slowness
Smaller easily fixable problems

Java in Plasma

admin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:01:53 +0000

I had encountered a blog on Troll’s website (can not recall where exactly it was, and who posted it… if you find it, please notify me) about creating Java objects from C++. More precisely, creating Qt Jambi widgets and using them in a C++ program.

It gave me an idea. How about a Java-based Plasmoid? We have Python, JavaScript (ECMAScript) and what not, but no Java.

There still are no Java bindings for Plasma, but that doesn’t mean that there can not be Java Plasmoids. If you think that I’m talking gibberish, just look at the following screenshot. As you can see, there are a couple of plasmoids that say Java (to be exact, there are 4 of them).

No, they are not C++ plasmoids that just write ‘Java’ to fool you, those are applets written in Java. You have the code in Plasma’s playground (/trunk/playground/base/plasma/applets/java).

The main problem is setting up the environment.

First you have to install Java SDK (tested with SUN’s, it should also work with IcedTea),
then, you have to install (or compile) Qt Jambi which is a bit pain in the neck if you have Qt with debug symbols included.
And, once it is all installed, you need to set the environment variables both for compiling the applet, and running it in Plasma afterwards. You can use the environment.sh that is included with the source, and modify it to your needs. You also need to change the Jambi’s path in CMakeLists.txt.

Well, that should be all. When I find the time to try to generate Plasma bindings for Java, you will be notified (To be honest, I hope that someone will beat me to it)

Cheerio!

Kopete contacts in Lancelot

admin — Sun, 25 May 2008 13:16:20 +0000

Although my intention was not to make the Contacts section for 4.1 (that is to disable it) and to wait for Telepathy and Akonadi to be integrated into KDE PIM, I just couldn’t wait.

Lancelot now shows on-line contacts from Kopete, altogether with contact pictures. Unfortunately, the D-Bus interface to Kopete is underpowered so the list updating is pooling-based. Alternative would be to make a Lancelot plug-in for Kopete, but that will have to wait for post-4.1 period (if the need for that remains).

No other IM applications are going to be supported for the time being. I intend to make the IM connections pluggable… but it will not be done for 4.1.

The next step will be to populate the left side of the window with e-mail related stuff such as unread messages from KMail.

Back on track (Lancelot)

admin — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:02:31 +0000

Well, I confess that I could be called lazy and all, since there is not that much visible progress in Lancelot’s world. But I have a couple of excuses:

Exams. Unfortunately, I have obligations beside KDE, Plasma and Lancelot. If somebody would like to pay me to do KDE work, I would gladly accept.
Plasma breakage. As you probably know, Plasma went through API review and conversion to WoC. So, that had to be done for Lancelot as well. And it was quite painful since Lancelot is based on completely custom-made widgets (now in a separate liblancelot library).

So, enough complaining and excuses, Lancelot is now again in buildable state, and more importantly, in a screenshottable state:

(the wallpaper atm is from NetBeans projet’s website).

The news include:

PUCK: Improvements to PUCK (Plasma UI Compiler) which now has an automatic module generator for custom classes. It parses the class definition and generates Python modules for PUCK (most Lancelot modules for PUCK are generated using this).
libLancelot: The backgrounds for all widgets are based on SvgPanel.
Lancelot launcher applet: The main applet is rewritten, and it has a few glitches at the moment. The configuration is now complying with the new Plasma’s configuration framework.
Lancelot menu: Have I mentioned that it is screenshottable? Nothing more than that ATM.

That’s all for today. Cheerio!

Site for Lancelot and status update

admin — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:44:13 +0000

I was a bit jealous when I saw the Raptor menu’s site, so I decided that Lancelot needed one too. While compiling the latest KDE (and Plasma) from SVN I had nothing better to do than web design. The result is available right here. It is not finished yet - documentation and screenshots are missing, but I intend to make it more comprehensive in the future - along with the new developments in the world of L. So to repeat, the address of the site is http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org

The split

The latest development before the Big Plasma Breakage (or as some call it ‘the transition to Widgets on Canvas’) was that the Lancelot is now divided into two main parts - the application and applets on one side, and the liblancelot library on the other. The library contains the base framework including advanced Plasma widgets and layouts. It is in a very experimental state at the moment, and it is not advised for anyone to use it outside of Lancelot. The API compatibility is being broken every week at the moment, but at some point it will stabilise (sometime around KDE 4.2 or 4.3).

WoC

Plasma is becoming stable enough (API-wise) and now it is Lancelot’s turn to reach the Big Breakage. Or to be more precise, it currently is in it’s Big Brekage state, but needs to get out of it. Since there are quite a few things that need to be changed, I have decided to do a bit more, so a couple of old widgets are being reimplemented from scratch to be more flexible and reusable (most notable example is that the old list widget is being split into ScrollBar, ScrollPane and List).

That’s all for now, I’ll ping you all again when the library becomes compilable in all its glory.

PCPress i KDE 4.o

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:25:00 +0000

Ovde imate članak o KDE 4.0 koji je izašao sa mesec dana zakašnjenja, i sa nekoliko što gramatičkih. što semantičkih grešaka napravljenih od strane lektora. (Original *nema* te greške, i to mogu da dokažem )

Theme Contest and New Features

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:26:58 +0000

Plasma now supports different looks for panels depending on the screen edge where the panel is located. You can find more details about how to make this kind of themes at KDE’s Techbase. Basically if you want to create a custom look for a left panel, just create all background elements for it and add prefix ‘west-’ to the name of every element. (east for right, north for top and south for bottom panel).

If you don’t want to name all the elements yourself, you could always use the Slim Glow theme as a base template since it uses this new feature of Plasma.

Reminder: Start making the Plasma themes, there is a contest going on!

Plasma Themes Contest

admin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:36:02 +0000

This is a post from the Dot, I’m just copying the announcement here as well. So, if you would like to comment, just do it there please.

The KDE Plasma team is inviting everyone to participate in a contest to create Plasma themes from which a select few will be chosen to be included as a part of the upcoming KDE 4.1 release. This is a great opportunity to contribute to a very visible component of the KDE project, the Plasma desktop.

A great feature of Plasma is the ability to theme components of the desktop using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs). This means there is no need for you to know C++ or any other programming language to create a great looking theme.

You only need to know how to use one of many graphics tools (e.g. Krita, Inkscape, The GIMP, Karbon, etc.) and that is all. Depending on your prowess with such tools, you can create great looking plasma themes in as little as an hour.

You can find a quick guide to creating Plasma themes in the Creating a Plasma Theme in 7 Easy Steps Techbase article.

Rules:

Submit your work in the Plasma Themes section of KDE-Look.org website. Put a notice ‘(for theme contest)’ in the title of the theme.
Submissions will be accepted as a tar.gz file of the theme folder.
Submission deadline is 9th April, 2008 18:00 UTC. Themes submitted after the deadline will not be considered for this release.
Winners will be announced by 18th April, 2008.
All artwork must be original or otherwise meet the requirements for distribution as part of a GPL licensed project. Preferred license is LGPL.

Guidelines:

Consistency. All theme parts should fit nicely with each other.
Completeness. Although Plasma automatically loads required images from the default theme when they are not present in the active theme, it is suggested that you include SVGs for all theme elements.
Uniqueness. The unique always stand out in the crowd; so should your theme.

Have fun! The Plasma Team.

This is a post from the Dot, I’m just copying the announcement here as well. So, if you would like to comment, just do it there please.

Lancelot and resize feedback

admin — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:33:28 +0000

First of all, Lancelot can be resized from now on. Just like any other window - drag any edge or corner, and you’ll change it’s size.

But that is not the main reason behind my blogging about this. Since Lancelot /is/ a ground for experiments, here’s another one.

Instead of just changing the mouse cursor when you reach one of the edges to one of the resize cursors, you get a more notifiable feedback - the color of the border changes as well. Since a screenshot is worth hundred lines of code… here it is:

The highlight will be themable.