tde-devels September 2010

devels@trinitydesktop.org

8 participants
127 discussions

Add applets
by Darrell Anderson 17 Sep '10

17 Sep '10

Not a bug, but not a feature request either. Minor enhancement and a usability issue. Right-click the panel and select Add applet. The subsequent dialog box is squished. Peculiar looking. Same behavior in 3.5.10. Thus, Trinity likely inherited the same behavior. The old benchmark was being usable in 640x480, but I think 800x600 is acceptable nowadays. Regardless, the dialog box could be a bit longer to provide better readability. Darrell

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Sloppy *.desktop file configurations
by Darrell Anderson 17 Sep '10

17 Sep '10

In the past, the desktop files in 3.5.x notoriously were poorly maintained. Starting a fresh KDE profile resulted in many error mesages in .xsession-errors about improperly configured desktop files. Usually errors about incorrect mimetypes and service types. I have not done any conclusive tests yet with Trinity, but have those types of errors received attention during Trinity development? Darrell

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Re: [trinity-devel] Second Trinity 3.5.12 Usability Test - SVN 1176205 (New Observations)
by Timothy Pearson 17 Sep '10

17 Sep '10

> New observations with using my existing ~/.kde directory: > 1. Several new icons appeared on the desktop (root and non-root). The icons were in the upper left of the desktop in a single horizontal row rather than the traditional vertical row along the left side: > Web Browser > My Documents > My Computer > Printers > My Network Places > There are two icons named Trash, but one was a document icon. The latter is the one representing the original Trash.desktop file in my ~/Desktop directory. > I'm curious why they appeared horizontally rather than vertically. They appeared verically with a new, fresh Trinity desktop. > Home was on the desktop. > In 3.5.10 I see only Home and Trash. > I discovered how to disable the new icons in Configure > Desktop/Behavior/Device Icons. Nice touch for most users! Probably needs some documentation somewhere so new Trinity users are forewarned. :) Were > those device icons added in 3.5.11 or 3.5.12? The appropriate web pages should be updated. I don't see anything on the 3.5.11 page. > I presume with the new Device Icons support, that users should delete the > old Trash.desktop file from ~/Desktop? Seems to work here. Yes. This was a long standing point of irritation for me; if Micro$oft could make it easy to access those system functions, then why couldn't KDE? I see the configuration options have also passed the user-discoverability test. ;-) > ================================================== > 2. When I select a panel quick launch app(let) icon, or a desktop icon, the icon flashes and grows momentarily. That likely provides useful feedback for many people. I don't see anything obvious in the Panel configurations to disable. Probably will slowly drive me nuts. :) Please tell me of a way to disable that feature! I don't see one offhand. I never used stock KDE3.5.10 until very recently, so I didn't even notice there was a difference! Thank you for bringing that to my attention; I will need to add a configuration option to disable it. > ================================================== > 3. Mentioned previously, but I'll include here now that things are getting > fixed. The Klipper icon in the system tray is larger than the system tray. > I cannot see the top or bottom part of the icon. This does not seem to be > a system tray icon problem as other system tray icons look fine. Interestingly, this happens only on the root desktop and not my non-user testing desktop. I renamed the klipperrc file and started X. Same problem. > Screen grab: http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/images/klipper.png That is downright weird. It's probably related to the new icon resizing support, but I wonder why it has not cropped up before, or with other tasktray programs that share the same base code? ================================================== > 5. The root konqueror toolbars look weird. > Screen grab: http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/images/konq.png > Update: when I created a new fresh Trinity desktop as non-user, I saw the > same artifacts in the Konqueror toolbars. Can you send a screen grab of what they are supposed to look like? > ================================================== > I hope this helps! It sure does! Tim

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Updated startkde
by Darrell Anderson 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

Once again I forgot to attach a file I said I was attaching! Darrell

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.xsession-errors is restored
by Darrell Anderson 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

The change in startkde must have been the problem. (Placing $KDEHOME in quotation marks.) Darrell

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The Default Trinity Desktop
by Darrell Anderson 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

I temporarily renamed the ~/.kde directory so Trinity would create a new profile directory. Beauty is always subjective, but I think Trinity should change some of the old die-hard KDE defaults. As you mentioned previously, Trinity is now the upstream source, not KDE. You now are the man. Be bold. Be different. :) So here are some thoughts about the default Trinity desktop. 1. As you seem keen on changing references from KDE to Trinity, you might want to consider a new splash image. Likewise for your side image in the K-Menu. 2. I always found the KDE-Classic Icon Theme somewhat unpleasant. The Crystal SVG icon set is popular and cleaner. 3. I never understood the blind acceptance of four virtual desktops. Most new users will appreciate two. 4. With only two virtual desktops, the Small panel can be used as a default. 5. Digital clocks are geeky. Just choose Plain as the default. 6. Change the default desktop icon text to non-shadowed, white. 7. Get rid of the bouncing mouse cursor. :) Yeah, I mentioned that already. I'm making a not-so-subtle point. The thing is obnoxious. Stupid, Dumb. Irritating. Annoying. Childish. Unprofessional. I greatly appreciate any distro I test where the devs have changed the default mouse pointer to Non Busy. And quite a few devs have done that too. 8. None of the desktop device icons are enabled. You went through the effort to create many new useful icons, so why not add them and set enable Device Icons as the default? 9. I don't understand the fetish and dumbing down with the default view in Konqueror with icons. Set the default view to Tree View, and Show Hidden Files. Treat users like adults and not kids. :) 10. A bug: when I select the desktop Web Browser Device Icon, I receive an error message: Unknown host default.browser. The message box has an OK button but the message box disappears by itself in about 1.5 seconds. Insufficient time to actually read without repeating the process a few times. 11. A bug: Selecting the My Documents Device Icon results in an error because the ~/Documents directory does not exist. I personally would get upset if any software created such a directory on my system. On the other hand, I think when a person explicitly enables that device icon then such a directory should get created. No, not quite. I think when a person enables that directory a pop-up should appear asking for the path to that directory. The default would be ~/Documents, but the user can change the text in the popup text box. I don't consider that a feature request needing to be added after your feature freeze. I consider this behavior a bug. 12. I'm glad you selected to display both software names and descriptions in the K-Menu. I always empathize with new users and they need both. Flip a coin, but I prefer Description (Name) rather than Name (Description). My belief is that most people are looking to solve a task and a description first helps toward that goal. Especially since so many developers have given their apps names that provide no clue to the apps purpose. 13. So you added the option to use a Kickoff style K-Menu. Nice programming touch. Really! You'll never see me use the Kickoff though. I'm just too old to change some habits. :) 14. Place the Exit/Lockout applet buttons on the default kicker. Many people use the buttons and they provide a familiar method to exit for new users. 15. Trinity did not create a new ~/.kde3 directory, but honored $KDEHOME and created a new ~/.kde! I hope this helps! Darrell

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Second Trinity 3.5.12 Usability Test - SVN 1176205 (New Observations)
by Darrell Anderson 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

New observations with using my existing ~/.kde directory: 1. Several new icons appeared on the desktop (root and non-root). The icons were in the upper left of the desktop in a single horizontal row rather than the traditional vertical row along the left side: Web Browser My Documents My Computer Printers My Network Places There are two icons named Trash, but one was a document icon. The latter is the one representing the original Trash.desktop file in my ~/Desktop directory. I'm curious why they appeared horizontally rather than vertically. They appeared verically with a new, fresh Trinity desktop. Home was on the desktop. In 3.5.10 I see only Home and Trash. I discovered how to disable the new icons in Configure Desktop/Behavior/Device Icons. Nice touch for most users! Probably needs some documentation somewhere so new Trinity users are forewarned. :) Were those device icons added in 3.5.11 or 3.5.12? The appropriate web pages should be updated. I don't see anything on the 3.5.11 page. I presume with the new Device Icons support, that users should delete the old Trash.desktop file from ~/Desktop? Seems to work here. ================================================== 2. When I select a panel quick launch app(let) icon, or a desktop icon, the icon flashes and grows momentarily. That likely provides useful feedback for many people. I don't see anything obvious in the Panel configurations to disable. Probably will slowly drive me nuts. :) Please tell me of a way to disable that feature! ================================================== 3. Mentioned previously, but I'll include here now that things are getting fixed. The Klipper icon in the system tray is larger than the system tray. I cannot see the top or bottom part of the icon. This does not seem to be a system tray icon problem as other system tray icons look fine. Interestingly, this happens only on the root desktop and not my non-user testing desktop. I renamed the klipperrc file and started X. Same problem. Screen grab: http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/images/klipper.png ================================================== 5. The root konqueror toolbars look weird. Screen grab: http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/images/konq.png Update: when I created a new fresh Trinity desktop as non-user, I saw the same artifacts in the Konqueror toolbars. ================================================== I hope this helps! Darrell

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Second Trinity 3.5.12 Usability Test - SVN 1176205
by Darrell Anderson 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

Installed the updated kdelibs and kdebase packages. Cleaned house to restore baselines. Regarding the previous reports: 1. Trinity still creates a /root/.kde3 directory for root. As far as I can tell, Trinity is using /root/.kde because everything is performing as expected. A huge improvement! :) Some snooping revealed that the only directories in /root/.kde3 are the cache, socket, and tmp directories. The same directories exist in /root/.kde too. I deleted all six directories and restarted X. All six were recreated. I restored the snippet I had in startkde to create the KDEROOTHOME environment variable on-the-fly. That stopped the creation of the /root/.kde3 directory. Something still remains awry. ================================================== 2. There is no ~/.xsession-errors file being created. I had those files this afternoon when we were debugging. What happened to the file? Looks like a regression there. ================================================== 3. I temporarily removed the "1>&2" redirects from startkde so I would have stdout on the screen. I did not see anything abnormal. ================================================== 4. I changed the "1>&2" redirects to "2>&1" so I might see error messages. I did not see any of those I reported previously, but I would be more assured if I saw a proper xsession-errors file. ================================================== 5. hplip-systray still starts. Something is bothering me about this nonsense. This was a nuisance several years ago and I cannot remember what I did to stop the train. I don't think KDE ever honored the XDG ~/.config/autostart directory. Hence, the recent startkde tweak to add that directory probably does not help. Probably should undo that tweak. Hopefully something in the fogs of my mind surface to help me remember the magic from a few years ago. Rest assured that when I remember the solution we will document the resolution somewhere! ================================================== 6. The problem with creating a .directory file in the root of the file system is gone. ================================================== 7. I'm not seeing the "xset: bad font path element" nuisance message. ================================================== Let's figure out what happened to the xsession-errors file so we can be sure that most of these problems are history. I hope that helps! Darrell

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Gentoo Overlay
by Ксензов Алексей 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

What do you think about the creation of overlay for Gentoo?

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Re: [trinity-devel] First Trinity 3.5.12 Usability Test (KDEROOTHOME)
by Darrell Anderson 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

> Quick comment here. The above was very important. > ;-) Trinity expects to > see KDEROOTHOME set, not KDEHOME, when run as root. > Maybe you can help > here; is this a Debian-only distinction, or do other Linux > systems also > use KDEROOTHOME? Setting KDEROOTHOME helps when running as root. Trinity did not create a new /root/.kde3 directory. I made the change in my proposed startkde. An updated proposed script is attached. I added the following test: # Run a quick test for root. if [ -z "$KDEROOTHOME" ] && [ "$UID" = "0" ]; then echo "startkde: User ID is $UID. Setting KDEROOTHOME to $KDEHOME." export KDEROOTHOME=$KDEHOME fi So setting KDEROOTHOME will help and I hope my change cures the problem. However, in addition to running my conky display from /root/.kde/Autostart, I realized that KPersonalizer was not running. That provides confirmation that Trinity starts out honoring $KDEHOME for root but then changes sometime after. Trinity must be reading the startupconfig file from /root/.kde in order to not run KPersonalizer. So although KDEROOTHOME helps avoid some of the problems I described, there remains something awry with the way Trinity starts out correctly and then veers off course.

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tde-devels September 2010