KNewStuff with Goya

KHotNewstuff2 is going to be using Goya (once it moves out of kdereview and into kdeui on the 19th). So I thought publicly thank Raphael(ereslibre) and Kevin(ervin) for the great work on such a nice framework. I also wanted to let everyone see the new ui a bit and get some feedback.



This is 'khotnewstuff4 plasma-themes.knsrc' Currently the name, one line of description, author, and downloads are visible. I'll try to get rating shown, and a way to see more information about an entry. Also, notice the tooltip shows the complete description for each entry, it can be a bit big at times, not sure what the best way to show that would be, suggestions anyone?

Preparing for 4.1

April flew by. I was able to speak with Josef on irc for a while a couple weeks ago, and got some direction for fixing some DXS (Desktop eXchange Service) issues. The engine for DXS is almost fully functional, but will take some more love these last couple weeks before freeze. Frank added id tags to the kde-look.org type sites so if all goes well we should be able to rate and do other collaboration-type things with stuff hosted there (There's an API, I just need to hook up to it now that entries have an id to send).

On the UI end, Ervin tells me he has one more api refactoring to do before Goya is ready for kdereview. I hope it's in time to be released for 4.1. It really is a nice thing to use, and has simplified much of knewstuff2's ui code.

Sharing some hindsight

Right after thiago announced qt-copy had upgraded to rc1, I updated. Learn from my mistakes. Don't update without reverting everything (./apply-patches changes stuff, duh!). Also don't try to just make from your build folder, clean out your build folder first, and rerun configure.

Not sure why I was so braindead thismorning, but thought I'd share the wisdom of hindsight so you don't follow and make the same mistakes I did ;)

Color Scheme KHotNewStuff support

The color schemes kcm module (under display in system-settings) got connected to KHotNewStuff2 last night (thanks again to Frank of kde-look.org). He also set up a reference of the existing providers so if your app has data on kde-*.org and you want to hook up KHotNewStuff, look for the provider url here.

Plasma themes via KHotNewStuff

hi again, Anyone out there notice the "New Themes..." button in configure desktop dialog got enabled today? It allows easy access to all the many (7) plasma theme's early adopters have added to kde-look.org. I added the functionality (3 lines of code, and a providers url from Frank to add to the knsrc file) then used it to download all the themes.

Here's the mandatory screenshot:



A couple small problems so far. The so-called themes, aren't all really themes. Pink bunnies is really just a widget style, so needs a whole theme to make it work right (shouldn't be hard to do), and for some reason downloaded slim-glow and ozone don't appear in the drop-down, while Akoma, Aya, and TiComb do (maybe we only scan capital letter folders). Also, heron unpacks without a folder for itself, so maybe wait for the author of that one to repack it into a heron folder before trying that one.

Otherwise, enjoy!

P.S. the above screenshot was taken on my work pc which is not using goya, in case anyone was wondering.

goya, goya goya

hello again, I've been playing with the next iteration of goya (I call it goya2, but Rafael probably has a better name). I also spoke with Celeste about a usability issue (system-wide install ui) which led to discussion about other usability issues in the KHotNewStuff download dialog (context-menu type actions in the drop down of the install button). I think the current plan is to separate the actions into three toolbuttons (Install/uninstall, info, and collaboration). We'll see if this makes sense or not in the ui.

I also got some artistic feedback from my current ui (not checked in) from Eugene and reacted to most of his suggestions in this screenshot.

Note that I'm using alternating row colors (white peach incidentally, is one of two in svn color schemes that actually has a different alternating row color), the black lines around the items have become the window color instead, and the install buttons are vertically aligned with the image previews on the left (which will have a frame and shadow soon).

Also note that since I'm setting a fixed width to the qtoolbuttons, goya doesn't render the whole button for some reason, Rafael will probably have a fix for this faster than I could write to tell him about it (he's been making leaps and bounds with goya lately).

Also note that if the summary of an item doesn't fit in the two lines I allow, the tooltip for that item will show the whole summary (in 4.0 the summary would often make the horizontal range of the items verrry long)

Anyway, suggestions, tips, questions?

Progress part 2

I've mistakenly been waiting for Goya to move into kdereview and then kdelibs/kdeui so I could check in my ui changes to the kns download dialog (mistakenly, because I really could work on it more, rather than sit on my backside) (pokes Raphael). In the meantime I've been looking around for other small projects to fill my time. Unfortunately, Pino keeps finishing them before I even figure out what the problem is ;) (thanks Pino).

Anyway, long story short, I got back to looking at the download dialog more thismorning. I still have lots to do to get it working as well as it did in 4.0 (at least including the same information in the ui, with a bit nicer and faster interface). Also need to get some caching stuff figured out, and probably some categorization figured out also to make Kalzium's dataset not such a pain to view in the dialog. Also need to work on/test dxs client side code to make sure it works for what we'll need it for when plasma starts to use it (Get new widgets from the internet).

So small progress, but a good start, I got the dialog showing downloads (which really helps when you look at Most Downloads feed). And the provider information action working. Next I'd like to get the rating showing (maybe with those nice stars nepomuk uses?) and enable/connect rating items from the dialog itself. Then proceed to enable/connect all the actions in the Install button's menu to view comments, and such from the dialog.

P.S. got an update of Rubber Windows kwin plugin from level1 this morning. Works great, can't wait to hear Stephanie's reaction when she gets on the computer later and sees it. (Will check in as soon as I get word from level1 to do so)