Just one image of a new Lancelot feature:

The original Lancelot icon is usually considered weird-looking when seen on a panel (or desktop). Even I have had Lancelot set up not to use it.

I like the old icon very much, and I’m still proud I succeed in making something like that with a vector-graphics program (Inkscape) so it still is, and will be until the end of time, the main icon of the Lancelot project. But from now on, it will not be used for the applet button.

Now, the default icon is the standard KDE icon – the same one other launchers use.

For those of you who want to have a normal-looking icon but still want others to see that you are using Lancelot and not something else, you can use the following one:

The new icon can be set through the applet configuration dialogue.

There was a wish once upon a time to make the section buttons in Lancelot smaller, that is narrower, because people thought that they waste too much space.

At first, I was reluctant since I didn’t see the point in doing it, but I changed my mind recently – Lancelot is pretty much feature-complete as it is (at least from my point of use/view), so I decided to implement something that I absolutely have no use for, but somebody else will. The fact that I’m missing the vertical tabs in Amarok could be another reason in making this

So, if you want to have the buttons as shown in the following image, just right-click them and choose the appropriate* option. (mind that this is available in trunk, not in the KDE SC 4.4).

*It says ‘toggle collapsed sections’ at the moment, but I’ll change it as soon as I think of a better name.

Just to notify you of a big recent (committed today to trunk) change in Lancelot‘s theming.

The items in the lists (ActionListView widget) now shouldn’t have a background – the standard background from Plasma (widgets/viewitem.svgz – the one you see in krunner, folder view, SAL…) is being used.

The only item that is excluded from this rule is the [Group-ActionListView-Categories] which is used for sublist headers (like ‘Recent documents’ inside the Documents section).

If you don’t remove the backgrounds, both backgrounds will be shown on mouse hover.

In order to adapt your theme to the new change, edit all sections in theme.config file that match [Group-ActionListView-*] and replace:

background.type=svg
background.svg=...something...

with:

background.type=none

That’s all.

This change will become active in KDE 4.5 so you have a lot of time to adapt. Cheerio!

The last few days were dedicated to Lancelot and the bugs assigned to me by our friendly Bugzilla system at bugs.kde.org. Most important bugs have been crushed.

But, it is no fun to talk only about bug fixes.

Item reordering

It all started with reordering of the favourites and a bug report about the documents and computer sections not being sorted correctly. The item reordering is now finished and works smoothly.

The perk with the reordering and drag and drop is that now it only works when Plasma is unlocked. So, Lancelot feels more like a part of Plasma than it did before – before this change, you could try to drag items from L, just to find out that you can’t drop it anywhere since Plasma is locked.

Search box in Lancelot Parts

Well, the title says it all. Right-click the parts applet -> Lancelot Part Settings -> Show the search box

… well, that’s all for today.

I’m getting reports that Lancelot has a black border on some distributions – like in this picture: http://imagebin.ca/view/h1oGpJ.html.

If you have this problem, please file a bug report for the distribution you’re using. I’ve already sent a mail [1] to kde-packager mailing list, but it looks like some distributions’ packagers don’t really follow that list.

I don’t get why the kdeplasma-addons is compiled on a separate system (or virtual machine) compared to libplasma and plasma and with a different set of installed libraries.

[1]

Hi all,

It have come to my attention that in
some distributions (no need to specify
which) Lancelot is compiled without the
support for compositing while the
plasma is composite-enabled.

While compiling Lancelot, you should
ensure the presence of libXcomposite,
libXrender and libXdamage development files.

Cheers and thanks in advance,
Ivan

Just a note – if you get larger than normal CPU usage when using Kopete and Lancelot at the same time in KDE 4.3, visit the BUG:196809

This should be fixed in 4.3.1. In the meanwhile you can disable the Kopete integration by doing the following:

open lancelotrc file (~/.kde/share/config/lancelotrc) with your favourite text editor and add the following line to the [Main] section

imPlugins=disabled

I know you’re not used to wallpaper-related posts from me, but I too have to express myself artistically sometimes. Unlike when I’m expressing my musical talents, that you’re not able to benefit from, when I decide to make some /visual/ art, you are.

I’ve received a couple of requests to post the wallpaper seen in the Lancelot 1.7 screencast, and I decided to comply.

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…

Vote

Just a small update – Lancelot‘s library received a great improvement – support for dropping the items into the lists. Although this doesn’t seem much, since L’s widgets are all totally custom-made and generally speaking implemented from scratch, trust me, it is

The first improvement noticeable to the outside world, that is, to you beloved users is that the Favourites list can now be reordered by simple drag and drop. And that you can add items to the Favourites by drag and drop.

(just imagine a mouse cursor dragging the Kontact item…)

p.s. This has reminded me, I’ve really got to make a new Lancelot screencast soon…