Breathe, breathe in the air
Don’t be afraid to care

The KDE 4.2 has been released today. Although in the image below, and in this post’s title it says “Breathe”, the official code name is “The Answer” since it is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything [link]

The release announcement can be found here, but for more information you should head straight to the visual guide which was nicely prepared for all of us by the KDE Promo team.

Introducing Lancelot

It is a peculiar feeling, although most of you who read my blog know what Lancelot is, and possibly using it already, KDE 4.2 is the first version that ships it. So, it is like Lancelot didn’t exist before, it is a new KDE application. Therefore, I’ll post here a small introduction of what it is.

Lancelot is an application launcher menu (or ALI) for KDE 4 designed to provide a place from which all your jobs begin. It provides quick access to applications, places, documents, contacts and system information.

For detailed info and documentation, visit the website.

For those of you who know what Lancelot is, here are the improvements since the 1.0 version:

• Full keyboard support
• New lists with scrollbars
• Themes that match Plasma themes from kdeplasma-addons kdeartwork module
• Even less bugs

KRunner integration

The most elusive feature in Lancelot is its KRunner integration. There are two reasons for that, the other menus (I speak mostly of Kickoff, as it is the default menu) tend to search only through the applications they navigate. The second reason is that the users are so accustomed to Alt+F2 to start commands, that they can’t be bothered to try something new.

As you probably know, KRunner now comes with two different interfaces which you can set in its configuration dialogue. Lancelot is the third. It integrates the menu and the usual application (and whatnot) browsing with the power of the /Run/ dialogue. Everything that you can do with the default KRunner interface, you can with Lancelot also (yes, the calculator also works ).

It is not my intention to say that you should ditch KRunner, it is an awesome application, but if you are really accustomed to L’s interface, you don’t need to use two different applications for basically the same task – starting applications. Before KDE 4.2, this was a bit tricky since you had to click on the search result in order to start it, but now, you can just press “Enter” to start the first match, or you could navigate with your arrow keys. The keyboard is a wonder, I say!

Dot

One of the great things that followed 4.2 is the new Dot (dot.kde.org). It looks fantastic! (I’m even thinking of changing the theme of my blog to something like the new dot interface).

In the other news, there were a couple of KDE bashing news lately which I really don’t care for. So, here’s just one quote for them (when I say “them”, I don’t think of poor Linus who doesn’t enjoy the bliss of KDE anymore, but of all others who made it a big deal, and started flames all over the net):

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

So, I read the Drive-by Mockups post by Nikolaj Hald Nielsen which is about the new amarok mockups that can be found at kde-look. So, I found out that some people consider the [Amarok] developers to be “quite strange” and stubborn.

One of the reasons for justifying the claim was that the sentence Nikolaj wrote “The truth is that we are aiming squarely at ourselves, as we are some of the biggest music fans out there…” was found to be “extremely arrogant” by one of the visitors.

It reminded me of when I said something similar on my blog – that I develop Lancelot for myself. And I am aware that this type of comment sounds strange, and a bit arrogant, but it is not. So, I’m passing what I wrote as a reply on Nikolaj’s blog here:

I’m sorry if I was the one who started the ‘I develop for myself’ wave of responses (some time ago concerning Lancelot) but you have to understand the developers to understand what that means.

What would you feel if someone, without specifying any specific reason, starts bashing something you have been dedicated to for a couple of years? You could ignore it. You could ignore it a couple or more times. But, eventually, you will have to snap and vent yourself through a reply.

So, be happy, be polite and with a smile in your heart and on your face, and the world will be a much nicer place to live in. (yes, that’s an order )

Well, the QtCentre Programming Contest 2oo8 is finally over and the winners are announced. OK, we all knew we are winners a month ago, but at that time we were called just finalists

Just to notify you all bug seekers out there not to file bugs against Lancelot in the Beta 1 of KDE 4.2 because most of them were fixed since the Beta 1 was tagged. If filing a new bug, please test whether it exists in the trunk.

… or wait for KDE 4.2 Beta 2 …

Brainstorming

I must say that the Lancelot brainstorm topic on KDE forums is a success. Thanks to everyone who decided to get involved, and a special thanks goes to Aaron for twitting about it (I guess that it brought a fair share of visitors).

Updates

As of today, Lancelot can (again) be considered stable enough (the trunk version that is) for daily usage. We are nearing KDE 4.2, which in Lancelot’s terms mean that we are nearing the 1.5 version. Although it is a .x upgrade to 1.0 that was released for KDE 4.1 in September this year, it is far from being a minor update. I can freely say that it now has all the features that I need* :). Now, there is only a matter of getting used to being able to use it without the mouse at all (I’ve got used to having to click on the search result to activate it instead of just pressing Enter).

* this is one of the reasons i decided to create the brainstorm topic – it is easier just to ask you what you want, than to guess

Issues

I said ‘stable enough’, not perfect, so there are a couple of items I need to fix. For example, the scrollbars in the application browser sometimes show up in a wrong place (no, I’ll restrain myself of commenting on QGV layouting mechanisms and quirks).

The second is a problem related to theming of the parts applet – the scrollbars are not shown in the part applet (that is, they are shown as 1 pixel wide lines) because there is no theme for them yet. I will probably use the default scrollbars from the Plasma theme for the parts applet (not for the menu though).

Since I have received so many complaints because “Lancelot doesn’t follow/obey/… Plasma theme”, and I am tired of pointing the people to the FAQ, I decided to make the necessary files needed by Lancelot for all Plasma themes that ship with plasma-addons package.

I’ve started a topic on KDE forums where you can enter all your wishes related to Lancelot. I think it is far better place than the comments section in blog posts.

I just wanted to thank every developer person who ever helped KDE.

Why just now? Well, first I saw the new list view in KMail which is rather awesome, and makes KMail even better than the former best* mail application – KMail without the new list view.

Beside that, I saw one of the tiny changes in Plasma related to the taskbar/icon tooltips. You’ll know what I’m talking about by moving your mouse from one icon to another.

Every now and then, KDE gets some, at first glance, totally insignificant feature (like this tooltip effect), but to be honest these little things really make a big difference. And such things really make me say “Wow, how neat!”.

So, everybody, rock on!

* Personal opinion, not a flamebait

You’ve heard it right, I’ve still got it! I still got the KDE mug we received (amongst other things) last year at aKademy! It is amazing, you can pour boiling tea in it and hold it with your whole hand without being burnt. Really amazing technology. And it is pretty, and has a nice logo on it.

Ok, I hear you saying “You dragged us here to listen just about a mug!?”. Well, I didn’t, but nevertheless, it is a really super-awesome mug, and it is an insult that you said “just a mug”!

Lately, I haven’t had much time that I could spend on Lancelot due to some other projects and the fact that I was to see Brian May (PhD) and Roger Taylor live here in Belgrade. But, than again, that’s a completely different story.

Keyboard support

The only thing from the (unwritten) Lancelot 2.0 roadmap that will be finished on time for 4.2 is the new ActionListView. You may recall mentioning the ActionListView2 in relation to the scrollbars that replaced the dreaded scroll buttons. Apart from the new scrolling mechanism, something else was weaved into the structure of the new lists. Ability to use them with the keyboard. So, that part is mostly finished in the current SVN version. The only thing left is to scroll the list to always show the selected item which will be trivial to do.

After that, the only thing left is to implement some fancy focus switching in the menu itself – for example, when you are in the search bar, and press the down arrow, to switch the focus to the first list etc. I hope I’ll be able to finish this in the week to come, so that after that I could focus only on bug fixing and stability (not that I’ve introduced a larger instability factor than the old ActionListVew was, but some bugs are to be expected).

Well, that is all for now… see you soon.

Addition: Junior Jobs

* Since I have received a few requests to sort the application list by name or description, and I haven’t got the time to do it now (it is a low priority task from my POV), if there is anyone willing to do that, you are more than welcome. Developing data models for L is as easy as it can be.

* The same goes for the thunderbird/evolution/whatever, pidgin/whatever support. If you know how to get online contacts or unread mails from the specified programs, feel free to use your knowledge and make a bridge between your favourite e-mail or IM program and Lancelot.

Well, since everybody is doing it, I too wanted to share my wisdom about the technology preview version of Qt Creator.

I will not write about the Qt Creator vs KDevelop relationship since KDevelop was never my scene. Tried the KDE3 edition once (a long time ago), and it just didn’t work for me (not only because of all the crashes). After that, I turned to Eclipse for C++ development because of its plugins, mainly the Subversion browser. I even set it to work with CMake properly, and to run KDE4 applications in their own environment. But, after awhile, I got tired of the slowness and of compilation errors related to ‘:w’ everywhere in the code, so I decided to return to Vim and to make an IDE out of it, but that is another story.

Qt Creator

At first I just downloaded it, started, and closed it almost immediately. Why? It looks too fancy for a real developer’s tool. Shiny run, debug and build buttons, etc. and a large Nokia logo. Why do I need that, I really don’t know.

Then, I decided to give it a second chance and start a small, but real project. The interface, although too fancy for me (remember, I use Vim) isn’t all that bad at all. It is pleasant and fast (unlike most IDEs today). I will not repeat Aaron’s stances on the subject – I mostly agree with him – I’ll just point a few other things that I did or did not like.

Pros

Well, I have nothing to add what was not already said – UI is clean, it is fast, it has a quite a few nifty features…

Cons

If this sounds too harsh or rude, I apologize, it wasn’t my intention, just trying to say what I find peculiar about the IDE.

I like keeping my code organized. I like having subdirectories, and subdirectories of those subdirectories etc. How to do that in Qt Creator? Well, to be honest, there is no way (at least not yet). You can organize your files the way you want, but Qt Creator will show all of them in a list. So, what is the point of organizing them? And what is the point of the Project browser if you get a list of a (potentially) few hundred files?

Then, you want to add a class to your project. You right-click the project in the project browser, and get an option to add a new file. OK, lets go for that. Here you get to create a ‘C++ Header file’ and ‘C++ Source file’ (amongst other non-relevant options for this task). OK, so we need to create them separately… but I know I saw somewhere an option to create a C++ Class… huh… let’s try this: File > New… Oh we get the SAME dialogue as the one we had earlier, only now we get to create a C++ Class as well. Strange.

Epilogue

I don’t want to sound like I hate the software, because I don’t – it is really cool, but I wanted to take it a bit more seriously than just ‘uh, a new toy, I must try it’. It has a potential to become a really good development environment, but has a really long way to go before it does.

And for the end, Trolls*, good job so far, now just finish it .

* Hmmm, since it is no more Trolltech but Qt Software, should we start calling them Qties (Cuties) instead of Trolls?