Tellico 4.1 is available, with some improvements and bug fixes. This release and any subsequent bugfix dot releases (such as 4.1.1) will be the last ones that build with Qt5.
Improvements
Improved image loading to be on-demand only, improving load time for local and remote images (Bug 490922).
Redesigned the welcome screen.
Added option to disable the welcome screen.
Added property to disable line feed replacement in Paragraph fields.
Added tooltips in the Settings for configured image location.
Added a tooltip to show the internal field name for custom fields.
Tweaked the report templates to follow color settings.
Added option to disable building of documentation.
The first maintenance release of the 24.12 series is out packed with important fixes and enhancements. This update focuses on polishing the newly introduced built-in effects, resolving issues with bin effects and the effect stack, and addressing some recently introduced crashes. Other highlights include fixing an issue where hiding a track in a sequence could alter the length of the parent sequence, ensuring tags and markers are maintained when reloading proxy clips, fixing Whisper model downloads and installation of Python virtual environment (venv) issues on some Linux distributions.
Full changelog:
Ensure sequence clips in timeline are not resized to smaller when hiding a track. Commit. Fixes bug #498178.
Fix crash moving build-in effect with feature disabled. Commit.
If you’re old enough, you probably remember that there was a meme
from the 4.x days is that Plasma is all about clocks.
I’ve started working on some new artwork, and ended up sidetracked
spending more time designing fun clocks for Plasma than on what I
planned to work on, proving there’s some truth to the meme.
These are based on one of the coolest watch designs I’ve seen in
recent years – a Raketa Avant Garde:
Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.
This week we look at the usability improvements landing in Alligator, Dolphin, and Itinerary; new features for KMyMoney, Tokodon and NeoChat; and updated versions of Amarok and Skrooge.
You can now mark one feed or all feeds as read (Mark Penner, 25.04.0. Link),
and save the settings when the application is suspended (Mark Penner, 24.12.3. Link).
Amarok 3.2.1 is out with a more complete Qt6 support and some small UI bug fixes. You can find the full announcement on Amarok's development Squad blog.
Note that this version is still marked as experimental.
Dolphin now visually elides the middle portion of long file names rather than
the end. So rather than Family Gathering 2….jpg you might see
Family Gath…ng 2018.jpg. Depending on your naming schemes, this might be a
good or a bad change for you, so sorry in advance if it affects you negatively,
but on average it should be an improvement (Nate Graham, 25.04.0. Link 1).
The right-click context menu in the Trash had the "Restore" action right next
to the "Delete" action, which made it easy to accidentally click the opposite
of what you wanted leading to data loss. This week Nate moved the "Delete"
action to the very end of the menu so this no longer happens. Also the "Restore"
wording was changed to "Restore to Former Location" for clarity (Nate Graham, 25.04.0. Link 1).
Felix fixed a regression in Dolphin 24.12.0 on X11 which caused the keyboard focus to
move to the Places or Terminal panels when Dolphin is minimized and then
unminimized (Felix Ernst, 24.12.2. Link).
The Itinerary team improved travel document extractors for Bilkom and PKP PDF
tickets (Grzegorz Mu, 24.12.2. Link 1
and link 2),
International Trenitalia ticket barcodes (Volker Krause, 25.04.0. Link),
and the Danish language support for Booking.com (Volker Krause, 24.12.3. Link).
The team also switched the querying public transport information feature from Deutsche Bahn
to a new API after the previous one was disabled. This unfortunately
results in the loss of some previously available trip information (Volker Krause,
24.12.2. Link).
Note that this same issue affects KTrip and for the same reason.
Keysmith Two-factor code generator for Plasma Mobile and Desktop
It's now possible to import accounts via otpauth:// URIs in QR codes (Jack Hill, 25.04.0. Link).
The scaling algorithm has been improved and now, when you zoom, individual pixels
without blur are clearly displayed (Jean-Baptiste Mardelle, 24.04.0. Link).
Note that this change is currently only available on Linux.
KMyMoney Personal finance manager based on double-entry bookkeeping
Thomas added a new feature that shows paid out dividends in investment reports and in the
calculation of returns (Thomas Baumgart. Link),
and Ralf added a column showing the annualized return in the investment
performance reports (Ralf Habacker Link).
LabPlot Interactive Data Visualization and Analysis
Israel made it possible for LabPlot to read the value generated by a formula from a cell instead of
the formula text iself when importing data from Excel files (Israel Galadima. Link).
The email lists in Merkuro Mail now supports selecting multiple emails at once,
dragging and dropping and keyboard navigation (Carl Schwan, 25.04.0. Link 1
and link 2).
It's also now possible to move or copy emails to another folder manually.
Joshua implemented requests for user data erasure (Joshua Goins, 25.04.0. Link)
and Carl fixed the bug that stopped the context menu froma appearing in the
maximized image preview (Carl Schwan, 24.12.3. Link).
The Skrooge Team announced the release of version 25.1.0 of its Personal
Finances Manager. This is the first version ported to Kf6/Qt6. You can find the full announcement here.
Joshua improved the compatibility with GoToSocial servers even more (Joshua Goins, 25.04.0. Link)
and also made it possible to share an account handle via a QR code (Joshua Goins, 25.04.0. Link).
Meanwhile Carl ported the remaining menus from Tokodon to the new convergent alternative (Carl Schwan, 25.04.0. Link).
Packaging
We updated the Craft packages to use Qt 6.8.1 and KDE Frameworks 6.10.0.
For a complete overview of what's going on, visit KDE's Planet, where you can find all KDE news unfiltered directly from our contributors.
Get Involved
The KDE organization has become important in the world, and your time and
contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we're going to need
your support for KDE to become sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved.
Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog
in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer either. There are many things
you can do: you can help hunt and confirm bugs, even maybe solve them;
contribute designs for wallpapers, web pages, icons and app interfaces;
translate messages and menu items into your own language; promote KDE in your
local community; and a ton more things.
You can also help us by donating. Any monetary
contribution, however small, will help us cover operational costs, salaries,
travel expenses for contributors and in general just keep KDE bringing Free
Software to the world.
To get your application mentioned here, please ping us in invent or in Matrix.
In the latest Plasma 6.3 Beta, you will find a new executable named kcursorgen in /usr/bin. It can convert an SVG cursor theme to the XCursor format, in any sizes you like. Although this tool is intended for internal use in future Plasma versions, there are a few tricks you can play now with it and an SVG cursor theme.
(Unfortunately, the only theme with the support that I know, besides Breeze, is Catppuccin. I have this little script that might help you convert more cursor themes.)
Requirements
The qt6-svg library.
The xcursorgen command, usually found in xorg-xcursorgen package.
Trick 1: Cursors at any size you like
You should be able to set any cursor size with SVG cursors, right? Well, not at the moment, because:
Only those apps using the Wayland cursor shape protocol would be using SVG cursors. Other apps still use the XCursor format, with a limited list of sizes.
Plasma's cursor setting UI hasn't been updated to allow arbitrary sizes.
But we can do it manually with kcursorgen. Take Breeze for example:
Step 1: Make a copy of the theme
First, copy the cursor theme to your home directory. And let's change the directory name, so the original one is not overriden:
Then open ~/.local/share/icons/breeze_cursors.my/index.theme in the editor. Change the name in Name[_insert your locale_]= so you can tell it from the original in the cursor settings.
Step 2: Regenerate the XCursor files
For example, if we want a size 36 cursor, and the display scale is 250%:
Some Wayland apps don't support fractional scaling, so they will round the scale up. So we need to include both 2.5 and 3 in the scale list.
The above command generates XCursor at size 36, 90 and 108. Note that the max size of the original Breeze theme is 72, so this is something not possible with the original theme.
(kcursorgen also adds paddings when necessary, to satisfy alignment requirements of some apps / toolkits. E.g., GTK3 requires cursor image sizes to be multiple of 3 when the display scale is 3. So please use --sizes=36 --scales=1,2.5,3, not --sizes=36,90,108 --scales=1, because only the former would consider alignments.)
Then you can go to systemsettings - cursor themes, select your new theme, and choose size 36 in the dropdown.
(Yes, you can have HUGE cursors without shaking. Size 240.)
Trick 2: Workaround for the huge cursor problem in GTK4
As explained before, Breeze theme triggers a bug in GTK4 when global scaling is used, resulting in huge cursors. It's because Breeze's "nominal size" (24) is different from the image size (32).
We can work around this problem by changing the nominal size to 32.
Step 1 is same as above. Then we modify the metadata:
cd ~/.local/share/icons/breeze_cursors.my
find cursors_scalable/ -name 'metadata.json' -exec sed -i 's/"nominal_size": 24/"nominal_size": 32/g''{}'\;rm -r cursors/
kcursorgen --svg-theme-to-xcursor --svg-dir=cursors_scalable --xcursor-dir=cursors --sizes=32 --scales=1,1.5,2,2.5,3
Then you can go to systemsettings - cursor themes, select your new theme, and choose size 32 in the dropdown. Cursors in GTK4 apps should be fixed now.
Extra idea: (For distro maintainers) reduce cursor theme package size to 1/10
It might be possible to only package the index.theme file and cursors_scalable directory for the Breeze cursor theme (and other SVG cursors themes), then in an postinstall script, use kcursorgen to generate the cursors directory on the user's machine.
This would greatly reduce the package size. And also you can generate more sizes without worrying about blown package size.
But the fact that kcursorgen is in the breeze package might make some dependency problems. I have an standalone Python script that does the same. (But it requires Python and PySide6.)
I recently sat down with Brodie Robertson again to appear on his Tech Over Tea show, this time on the subject of KDE’s recent fundraising, the role of money in open-source in general, and also design (I can never resist talking about this). If these topics interest you, check it out!
The Amarok Development Squad is happy to announce the immediate availability of Amarok 3.2.1, the first bugfix release for Amarok 3.2 "Punkadiddle"!
3.2.1 features fixes for some small UI bugs, improvements for file transfers to MTP devices, and some compilation fixes for different combinations of Qt6 versions and compilers, enabling easier testing of Qt6 builds.
Additionally, it is now theoretically possible to enable last.fm and gpodder.net support in a Qt6 build. However, this requires Qt6 support in liblastfm and libmygpo-qt; a functionality that
is not yet included in the most recent released versions of the libraries.
Changes since 3.2.0
CHANGES:
Support gpodder and lastfm on Qt6 builds
Limit maximum current track font size more when context view is narrow
BUGFIXES:
Fix displaying settings button for Internet services
Enable Wikipedia context applet on Qt6 builds
Don't crash when copying multiple files to MTP device (BR 467616)
Avoid unnecessarily flooding MTP devices with storage capacity queries
Compilation fixes for various compiler + Qt6 version combinations
Getting Amarok
In addition to source code, Amarok is available for installation from many distributions' package
repositories, which are likely to get updated to 3.2.1 soon, as well as
the flatpak available on flathub.
Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in Plasma"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
This week the focus was on landing final Plasma 6.3 features and UI changes… and land them we did! Now it's time to spend the next month exclusively on bug-fixing and polishing.
Notable New Features
When notifications arrive while "Do Not Disturb" mode is engaged, exiting that mode now shows a single notification informing you of how many you missed, rather than sending them all in a giant unmanageable flood. (Fushan Wen, 6.3.0. Link)
The desktop context menu for symbolic links now includes a "Show Target" menu item, just like one one in Dolphin. (Nate Graham, 6.3.0. Link)
The System Monitor app and widgets are now capable of collecting GPU statistics on FreeBSD. (Henry Hu, 6.3.0. Link)
Notable UI Improvements
If you didn't like the change in Plasma 6.2 to use symbolic icons in Kickoff's category sidebar, you can now undo it yourself; we changed the implementation to pull icons from the standard data source, so you can set them to whatever you want using the Menu Editor app. (David Redondo, 6.3.0. Link 1 and link 2)
Reduced the clutter on the Edit Mode toolbar, making its contents more focused and relevant. (Nate Graham, Link 1, link 2, and link 3)
The DrKonqi crash reporter/browser app's main windows now remember their size, maximization state, and (on X11), position on screen. (Nate Graham, 6.3.0. Link)
External web links in Kirigami-based apps such as Discover now show the typical "arrow pointing out of a square" icon to make this more clear. (Carl Schwan and Nate Graham, Frameworks 6.11. Link)
Modernized the UI style of the standalone printer-related apps that are not yet integrated directly into the System Settings page. (Thomas Duckworth, 6.3.0. Link)
All close buttons throughout KDE software are now consistent; we've standardized on the black X. As part of this, we also changed the timeout indicator on Plasma notifications to not be dependent on any particular close button icon appearance, as was the case before. (Nate Graham, Plasma 6.3.0 with Frameworks 6.11. Link 1, link 2, and link 3)
System Settings' Night Light page has moved from the "Colors & Themes" group to the "Display & Monitor" group, which is a more natural and expected place for it. (Kisaragi Hiu, 6.4.0. Link)
In Plasma's Networks widget, there's now a "Configure" button for networks that you've used in the past but aren't currently connected to. (Kai Uwe Broulik, 6.3.0. Link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma no longer crashes when you switch the desktop from "Folder" containment to "Desktop" containment, and then back. (Marco Martin, 6.3.0. Link)
The session restore "Excluded applications" list you can populate yourself now actually takes effect on Wayland. Also, you now list apps by their desktop file names, which lets the feature work for apps whose executable is ambiguous, such as Flatpak apps. (Harald Sitter, 6.3.0. Link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a bug that could cause full-screen windows being screencasted to freeze under certain circumstances. (Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)
Made laptops more robust against waking up while the lid is closed. (Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)
Tooltips for favorited apps in Kicker once again appear as expected, and don't disappear immediately on hover. (Marco Martin, 6.3.0. Link)
Typing text into KRunner that matches a history item but with different capitalization no longer causes the grayed-out auto-completion text to de-sync with the text you already typed. (Nate Graham, 6.3.0. Link)
Plasma no longer unnecessarily shows you an OSD indicating the default audio device when you return from a different TTY. (Kai Uwe Broulik, 6.3.0. Link)
Time zones shown in the Digital Clock widget's popup are once again sorted by time, rather than randomly. (Nate Graham, 6.3.0. Link)
Fixed a visual glitch that could manifest as brief graphical corruption when interacting with pages in the clipboard settings dialog in a certain way. (David Edmundson, 6.3.0. Link)
Fixed a bug in the Wayland session restoration feature that could make it inappropriately restore multiple instances of apps. (Harald Sitter, 6.3.0. Link)
In Discover, app pages and pages with lists of apps are no longer inappropriately horizontally scrollable. (Nate Graham and Ismael Asensio, 6.3.0. Link 1 and link 2)
Fixed an issue in Kirigami.Icon that affected multiple Plasma widgets, whereby an icon from the active icon theme would be mistakenly provided instead of a custom image, in cases where that custom image was referenced from an absolute path and happened to have the same filename as a themed icon. (Marco Martin, Frameworks 6.11. Link)
Fixed a case where some dialogs in Kirigami-based apps such as System Monitor could have overflowing footer buttons in some languages. (Nate Graham, Frameworks 6.11. Link)
At least 138 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over the past week. Full list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Reduced the System Monitor app's background CPU usage down to 1-3% with some clever internal restructuring. (Arjen Hiemstra, 6.3.0. Link)
Removed a bunch of unnecessary old "sanity checks" on login that were not actually providing any additional sanity, and could even prevent login under certain circumstances! (David Redondo, 6.3.0. Link)
Improved performance on certain GPUs while Night Light is active; previously it could sometimes be quite poor. (Xaver Hugl, 6.3.0. Link)
It's now possible to pre-authorize apps for remote desktop access, so you don't have to wait for them to pop up an interactive permission dialog. Preliminary documentation can be found here. (Harald Sitter, 6.3.0. Link)
How You Can Help
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine!
You don’t have to be a programmer, either. Many other opportunities exist:
You can also help us by making a donation! Any monetary contribution — however small — will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
A while ago a colleague of mine asked about our crash infrastructure in Plasma
and whether I could give some overview on it. This seems very useful to
others as well, I thought. Here I am, telling you all about it!
Our crash infrastructure is comprised of a number of different components.
KCrash: a KDE Framework performing crash interception and prepartion for handover to…
coredumpd: a systemd component performing process core collection and handover to…
Sentry: a web service and UI for tracing and presenting crashes for developers
We already looked at KCrash, coredumpd, and DrKonqi. This week it’s time to look at the final piece of the puzzle — Sentry.
Sentry
Sentry is the service we have on the developer side of a crash to manage incoming reports.
As we’ve learned in the DrKonqi post, a Sentry-specific trace created by the preamble is eventually sent off to our Sentry server. In Sentry, yet more processing happens!
Symbolication
If the user hasn’t explicitly opted into it, there usually aren’t debug symbols available on the user system. This would ordinarily render backtraces useless since they are just a bunch of memory addresses without names or references to our source code.
One of the reasons we adopted Sentry is because it can
fill in the gaps through a process called symbolication. For symbolication it essentially needs to know all the loaded libraries and can then fetch the relevant debug symbols via the various debuginfod instances out there. Once it has the debug symbols it can resolve that the address 0x2343244 is really the function int main(int argc, char **argv)
Fingerprinting
When a trace has been symbolicated it’s ready for fingerprinting. This tries to merge together the same
crash appearing in different submission into one single sentry event. Generally speaking if two submissions have the same trace frames, they are considered the same crash and merged into one event (in practice the rules are a bit more complicated).
Result
Eventually the crash event appears for us to fix.
In a future blog post, I’ll also give a more detailed guide on how to use Sentry to its full potential.
@ivan:kde.org
ngraham
