Features Being Developed For KDE 4.11 Desktop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Features Being Developed For KDE 4.11 Desktop

With one week to go until the soft feature freeze for KDE 4.11, there's a better idea for the features that are likely to come to the next major release of the KDE Plasma desktop...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTM3Mjg

[Ericg]

Of specific note in regards to the QML Work for 4.11

1) The menu should be finally ported to QML.
2) The Task bar should be finally ported to QML, thereby hopefully fixing the bug that causes entries to overlap or be in the wrong order or be skipping spaces, etc. Was supposed to land in 4.10 but it didn't make it.

KDE 4.11 is set to release in early August assuming no delays.

[schmidtbag]

The full screen fix would certainly be nice and appreciated. I'm not exactly sure what it is supposed to fix but I have come to notice that anything I do in fullscreen seems to have a very inconsistent frame rate. It's always smooth, but I if the camera in a game or movie is moving at a constant speed, it doesn't appear that way on my screen - its hard to describe but it's basically as though the camera speeds up and slows down every other second, subtly though. I only get this problem in KDE, but since I don't game or watch movies often, it hasn't been enough of a nuisance to do anything about it. vsync doesn't fix it.

[smitty3268]

4.11 was supposed to have a lot of the kwin qt5 work done, wasn't it?

I think they had a goal of being able to compile with Qt5, even though it wouldn't be a supported option. How'd that go?

[Ericg]

I think they had a goal of being able to compile with Qt5, even though it wouldn't be a supported option. How'd that go?

For those curious.... what Smitty is referencing is: http://vizzzion.org/blog/2013/01/the...-and-plasma-2/

I do not however see a status update as to whether or not any of these goals have been met or how close they are to BEING met.

[TheBlackCat]

I think they had a goal of being able to compile with Qt5, even though it wouldn't be a supported option. How'd that go?

I think all efforts to work on Qt5 are in the frameworks branch, which is completely separate from KDE SC 4.11.

[schmalzler]

2) The Task bar should be finally ported to QML, thereby hopefully fixing the bug that causes entries to overlap or be in the wrong order or be skipping spaces, etc. Was supposed to land in 4.10 but it didn't make it.

"Hopefully" fixed... I just don't get why that should be. They never managed to find the root of the issue. But as management, painting and animation is then done by QML, it really might be the case.
Though I'm really afraid of another major crasher. There was one nasty bug in 4.9 that got fixed in QML. 4.10 introduced this - still no reproducable way to crash it. I really hope 4.11 won't get another one crasher :/

[Awesomeness]

"Hopefully" fixed... I just don't get why that should be. They never managed to find the root of the issue. But as management, painting and animation is then done by QML, it really might be the case.

The new task bar is written from scratch which is also why it took so long. The chances of exactly the same bugs repeating are pretty slim. Sure, there may be new bugs but I think seeing the old ones gone is almost certain.

That said, I don't get the complaints. The whole point of the Plasma architecture is that everything is a plugin. Don't like one taskbar? Use another one. Don't like the notifications? Use different ones.
I don't like about the current default taskbar that I can't disable task switching via mouse wheel. Nobody sees my bitching about it. I simple use Smooth Tasks 2 instead and am fine.

[schmalzler]

The new task bar is written from scratch which is also why it took so long. The chances of exactly the same bugs repeating are pretty slim. Sure, there may be new bugs but I think seeing the old ones gone is almost certain.

That said, I don't get the complaints. The whole point of the Plasma architecture is that everything is a plugin. Don't like one taskbar? Use another one. Don't like the notifications? Use different ones.
I don't like about the current default taskbar that I can't disable task switching via mouse wheel. Nobody sees my bitching about it. I simple use Smooth Tasks 2 instead and am fine.

You usually have your algorithms, which should be independent of the used language/toolkit. If the error is there - boom. Probably the root is in the window managing part (Kephal?). Thats't what I said: The devs were not able to get the root of the issue - if it's not inside the GUI part the rewrite won't help.

And IMHO the default is what counts. Alternatives are nice to have but often aim at a specific feature. If you want a traditional task bar with Icons + text you are lost.
Also I did not complain about plasma/kde/alternatives/... - I simply said that I am afraid this additional radical change (that's what rewrites are in my opinion) may introduce additional problems, probably without solving the old ones.

[Awesomeness]

In the end distributors have to select defaults. They can default to Smooth Tasks as well.