In the past two months since the last update KDE Itinerary got the ability to use the current location as a starting point for journey searches, a currency converter and the ability to store hotel room details, among many other improvements.

New Features

Journey searches starting at the current location

The current device location can now be used as a starting point for journey searches.

For more details, see Kai’s blog post on this.

Currency converter

The same blog post also covers the newly added currency converter. While Itinerary was able to show currency conversion rates since some time already it now also allows to enter arbitrary values and get those converted in either direction.

Hotel room details

Another addition is a new field in hotel reservations to record room numbers or room access codes, which is particularly useful in hotels where you are presented with all that just on a display during (automated) check-in, rather than a physical key or paper card.

Kai covered this in another blog post.

Events

In about two weeks there’s the first edition of the Open Transport Community Conference in Vienna, Austria. That covers many topics highly relevant for Itinerary, from public transport routing over liberating public transport schedule data to ticket barcodes, to just name a few. Excited to see what will come out of this.

There’ll also be two more OSM Hack Weekends, one in Berlin and one in Karlsruhe.

Infrastructure Work

Served transit modes at stops

For public transport data backends supporting this, KPublicTransport can now also list the served modes of transportation or even the served public transport lines for stops in geocoding queries.

This allows for a more detailed display of location search results. The current location search UI doesn’t make use of this to the fullest extent yet though, only generic mode icons are shown based on this so far.

This is currently available with OpenTripPlanner and Hafas-based backends, and will also benefit KTrip.

Matrix trip synchronization

There has been some progress on the long-promised Matrix-based trip synchronization between different instances of Itinerary. In particular, the synchronization code can now properly handle the Matrix event size limit and transparently place larger elements into encrypted files. It also covers all of Itinerary’s internal data types (reservations, transfers, live data, Wallet passes and documents) meanwhile.

There’s still issues to work out around the edges, especially the first moments of syncing a new trip and the very last ones when deleting a trip.

Android SDK 35 support

Itinerary together with all other KDE applications for Android and their underlying stack had to be adapted to work correctly with the now mandatory edge-to-edge mode of Android SDK 35. If this works correctly you wont notice a difference, apart from a few places with fullscreen content. Without it things would have either looked very broken or we would not have been allowed to update via the Google Play store anymore.

There’s a separate post with more details on this topic.

MOTIS update for Transitous

A particularly significant MOTIS update deployed on Transitous was v2.2 which brought the ability to modify schedule data with Lua scripts applied during data import.

This allows to fix issues in the input data that we so far failed to get fixed upstream, and to normalize conventions between different datasets.

Prominent examples include the German long distance trains now being named in the expected way (using the trip number rather than the much less commonly used line number), and Flixbus busses in Europe actually being classified as long-distance bus services (which is important for filtering to work).

There’s more to fix still, the French long distance trains for example have a similar problem as the German ones, this probably deserves its own post eventually.

Fixes & Improvements

Travel document extractor

• Added or improved travel document extractors for AirAsia, B&B Hotels, Booking.com, Center Parcs, Colosseum, Cvent, Ethiad, Eurostar, Eventbrite, FCB, Finnair, LTG Link, Northlink Ferries, Odoo, pathe.fr, Pretix, RegioJet, Ryanair, SNCF, Tito, tixly, United Airlines and ZSSK.
• Fixed parsing of Apple Wallet passes with an UTF-8 BOM in their message catalogs.
• Added support for Apple Wallet pass bundles (.pkpasses files).
• Use Aztec barcodes for MÁV domestic tickets, even when given as PDF417 barcode. This hopefully fixes issues with getting PDF417 MAV tickets scanned correctly.
• Give extractor scripts the ability to explicitly request rotated text.
• Consider dividing trains when determining whether two reservations refer to the same trip.

All of this has been made possible thanks to your travel document donations!

Public transport data

• Handle additional transit modes added in MOTIS v2.0.76 (aerial lift, cable cars, funiculars).
• Make use of timezone information from MOTIS v2.3.
• Support variable polyline encoding resolutions for MOTIS.
• Parse vehicle features and operator information in legacy Hafas journeys.
• Fix parsing of intermediate stops in legacy Hafas journeys.
• Fix parsing of SNCF onboard data with missing carrier information (bug 506874).
• Support result paging for LTG Link and Srbija voz.
• Add support for two new EFA transit modes (on-demand services and long distance busses).
• Sort the location search history locale-aware.
• Improved automatic backend selection for location searches without any context information.

All of this also directly benefits KTrip.

Itinerary app

• Also show ticket barcodes for hotels when available. While somewhat rare this is quite relevant when used.
• Initially position the journey result view at the end for searches by arrival time (bug 507149).
• Prefer 2D barcodes in Apple Wallet passes when available, those are more reliable to scan on a mobile phone display.
• Remove duplicated entries from seat number displays.
• Include location search history and downloaded public transport assets in the exported data as well, allowing for a more complete migration to another device.
• Use a more appropriate time format in delay notifications.
• Fix rendering of some rich text Apple Wallet fields.
• Also show event names on the trip map view.
• Show the maximum occupancy of any stop if we have no occupancy information at the departure stop.
• Improved the performance of displaying journey search results.
• Downloading public transport logos now also follows the setting for using Wikimedia online content.
• Fixed scaling issues in public transport SVG icons.
• Put action groups consistently into the overflow menu of they don’t fit into the toolbar.
• Fixed transfer time calculation to events without end time.
• Allow adding another transfers if an adjacent transfer is far enough away.
• Fixed handling of elements without an explicit end time in automatic trip grouping.
• Prefer the current trip when determining the default import target.
• Fix applying flight journey query results to flight reservations, and create entries for aerial lifts.

How you can help

Feedback and travel document samples are very much welcome, as are all other forms of contributions. Feel free to join us in the KDE Itinerary Matrix channel.

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week we released the second beta of Plasma 6.5, and there are a lot of fixes in it! This week also sees some great bug fixes, as well as a number of UI improvements related to language and time.

Notable UI Improvements

Plasma 6.5.0

When you’re using your system in a language that’s not English, you can now find Emojis in the Emoji Selector window by searching for their English names, in addition to the names in your primary language. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Week numbers shown in Plasma’s various calendars have now been italicized to distinguish them from day numbers. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Plasma 6.6.0

Made multiple UI improvements to the time zone chooser map that’s visible in a few places: you can now zoom in and out farther, the map zooms in a more predictible way, there’s no more blurry text, and the borders of the clickable areas now perfectly map the borders drawn on the map. (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1, link 2, and link 3)

When using a right-to-left language like Arabic or Hebrew, Plasma will now show reversed versions of the audio icons in various places when the icon theme contains them — and the Breeze icon theme now does. (Farid Abdelnour and Nate Graham, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, and link 5)

Notable Bug Fixes

Plasma 6.4.6

Discover’s automatic shutdown/restart feature now allows apps with unsaved changes to prompt you to save first, preventing potential data loss. (Nate Graham and Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)

Fixed an issue preventing the message about other users being logged in when you try to restart or shut down from appearing. (Nate Graham, link)

Fixed an issue preventing Flatpak apps from being able to create launchers using the Dynamic Launcher portal. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Fixed an issue that made the Applications table on System Monitor’s main page blurry with certain scale factors. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

Removing the background of widgets in System Monitor now visually adjusts them to the color scheme properly. (Arjen Hiemstra, link)

Timestamps are now shown as expected for print jobs in the print queue. (Mike Noe, link)

The numbers in Plasma’s Timer widget now visually adjust to the color scheme properly. (Marco Martin, link)

When you’ve got Discover set up to prioritize apps from distro repos over Flatpak and/or Snap, searching for apps no longer inappropriately prioritizes the Flatpak or Snap versions. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Ampersands now appear correctly in text that shows up in the context menus of Task Manager tasks. (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed an issue that made the Media Player widget display filenames containing certain characters incorrectly. (Conor Smith, link)

Dragging a desktop widget partially off of a screen edge no longer makes the visualization of its position disappear. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

Fixed a case where DIscover could crash while quitting. (Aleix Pol Gonzales, link)

Fixed an issue in Discover that made it sometimes fail to display reviews properly for certain apps. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Fixed several issues with the Application Dashboard launcher: now it closes on focus loss like other launchers, doesn’t resize itself inappropriately if it’s open when the screen resolution, scale, or geometry changes, and no longer fails to pre-select items for many types of search results. (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1, link 2, and link 3)

Fixed an issue with the desktop grid view of KWin’s Overview effect that made it not show windows on inactive virtual desktops when using an unrelated non-default option. (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed a few sources of visual glitches when dragging items on the desktop when using a fractional scale factor. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

If you’ve got a misbehaving screen that connects and disconnects multiple times when plugged in (screens suck), you’ll no longer see multiple system notifications about this. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Using a font with a very tall baseline (for example, with many Arabic fonts) no longer makes text overflow out of the grid items on the Add Widgets sidebar. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

The Reset button on System Settings’ Date & Time page now resets the current time zone too, if it’s been changed at all. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)

Removed Spectacle’s “Show capture instructions” option, because it didn’t do anything anymore after we removed the giant text field in the rectangular region UI in Plasma 6.4. (Nate Graham, link)

Frameworks 6.19

Fixed a case where Plasma would crash when asked to display certain malformed themes. (Marco Martin, link)

Fixed the “Delete oldest files from the trash” option for how to handle a full trash. (Pan Zhang, link)

Fixed an issue that made it impossible to paste text containing “file:///” into a Sticky Note widget. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)

Other bug information of note:

• 1 very high priority Plasma bug (down from 2 last week). Current list of bugs
• 28 15-minute Plasma bugs (up from 27 last week). Current list of bugs

Notable in Performance & Technical

Plasma 6.4.6

Fixed an issue that made Plasma consume CPU time for no reason while the Networks widget is visible in the active part of the System Tray, until the first time the System Tray popup is opened. (Fabian Vogt, link)

Plasma 6.5.0

The time that Discover last notified you about updates is now stored in the state config file, not the settings config file. This is part of the meta-project to move rapidly-changing information out of config files so you can version-control them more easily. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Plasma 6.6.0

Old stale config data about ancient panels no longer clutters up your Plasma config file; it’s now deleted as intended. (Nicolas Fella, link)

Slightly improved the speed and memory efficiency of opening the Sticky Note widget’s context menu. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)

Frameworks 6.19

Fixed an issue that made System Monitor render graphs when not visible, wasting resources. (Arjen Hiemstra, 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, too.

You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size 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 a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

I’m delighted to announce the new 6.1.0 release of KPhotoAlbum, the photo management software for KDE/Linux!

This is the first new release of our new KF6/Qt6 port, and it brings some fine-tuning, but we could also bring forward the code apart from bugfixes. here's the ChangeLog:

Added

• Add command line option --config
• Add command line option --save-and-quit
• Add home and end key shortcuts to date bar
• Add option to append description text when changing multiple image descriptions (#470433)
• Show visual feedback when setting a rating in the viewer (#509964)

Changed

• index.xml file format version bumped to “11”: The new file format version improves the “compressed” file format and handles arbitrary category names correctly. Positionable tags are also now stored natively in the “compressed” file format with far less overhead.
• Disable “View” actions when not appropriate (#505185)

Fixed

• Fix purpose plugin support (#501885)
• Fix database corruption when using category names starting with numbers (#477533)
• Improve responsiveness of date bar
• Fix spurious entries in “Search for images and videos with incomplete dates” (#505023)
• Fix crash when interacting with a category after deleting it (#478015)

Thanks everbody!

According to git log, the following individuals contributed commits to the new version (in alphabetical order):

• Albert Astals Cid
• Yuri Chornoivan
• Carlos De Maine
• Nicolas Fella
• Balló György
• Willem Hobers
• Tobias Leupold
• Randall Rude
• Yaron Shahrabani
• Johannes Zarl-Zierl
• Justin Zobel

Thank you very much for putting your time and energy in our beloved project :-)

— Tobias

KWin GameController Plugin: Weeks 5-6

It's been another few weeks of progress on the KWin GameController Plugin and I've got a lot to share! After spending the previous weeks setting up the foundation, I've progressed things forward by improving the logic a bit more, creating a few integration tests, integrating it into System Settings, and making sure it runs well on real hardware like the steamdeck.

The primary change was splitting up GameController into two classes. The new one being GenericInputDevice which lives in emulatedInputDevice.{cpp/h}. This allowed me to separate the GameController logic responsible for emulating keyboard and mouse into it's own separate class. Now GameController wrapper class is just responsible for monitoring controller input, resetting idle timer on user activity, and logging.

GenericInputDevice

GenericInputDevice is a class that inherits from InputDevice and is used to emulated Keyboard/Mouse in order to send those inputs through KWins input pipeline. The input_events come from GameController and get processed exactly like they were previously. Each GameController has access to an instance of GenericInputDevice to make its own calls. In the near future I plan on creating a static instance of this class for all GameController to access.

// Inside Gamecontroller construct
 m_inputdevice = std::make_unique<EmulatedInputDevice>();
 KWin::input()->addInputDevice(m_inputdevice.get());

..

// GameController Event Handling Function
void GameController::handleEvdevEvent()
{
 input_event ev;
 for (;;) {
 const int rc = libevdev_next_event(m_evdev.get(), LIBEVDEV_READ_FLAG_NORMAL, &ev);
 if (rc == 0) {
 logEvent(&ev);

 input()->simulateUserActivity();

 if (m_usageCount == 0 || isTestEnvironment)
 m_inputdevice->emulateInputDevice(ev);

.. 

// EmulatedInputDevice
void EmulatedInputDevice::emulateInputDevice(const input_event &ev)
{
 m_ev = ev;
 if (ev.type == EV_KEY) {
 qCDebug(KWIN_GAMECONTROLLER) << "Face button pressed: Simulating User Activity";
 evkeyMapping();
 } else if (m_ev.type == EV_ABS) {
 qCDebug(KWIN_GAMECONTROLLER) << "Analog buttons pressed: Simulating User Activity";
 evabsMapping();
 }
}

void EmulatedInputDevice::evkeyMapping()
{
 bool state = m_ev.value ? true : false;
 std::chrono::microseconds time = std::chrono::seconds(m_ev.time.tv_sec) + std::chrono::microseconds(m_ev.time.tv_usec);

 switch (m_ev.code) {
 case BTN_SOUTH: // A button → Enter
 sendKeySequence(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_Return), state, time);
 break;
 case BTN_EAST: // B button → Escape
 sendKeySequence(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_Escape), state, time);
 break;
 case BTN_NORTH: // X button → Virtual Keyboard
 // TO-DO toggle Virtual Keyboard not working on my distro ( Kubuntu )
 EmulatedInputDevice::toggleVirtualKeyboard(QStringLiteral("forceActivate"));
 case BTN_WEST: // Y button → Space
 sendKeySequence(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_Space), state, time);
 break;
 case BTN_TL: // L button → Ctrl
 sendKeySequence(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_Control), state, time);
 break;
 case BTN_TR: // R button → Alt
 sendKeySequence(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_Alt), state, time);
 break;
 case BTN_START: // START button → Meta
 sendKeySequence(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_Meta), state, time);
 break;
 case BTN_SELECT: // SELECT
 break;
 // Add more button mappings here as needed
 default:
 break;
 }
}

..

Integration Test: Qt Test

Part of the requirements for proposing significant contributions to KWin is creating integration test. This provides some assurance that things, like core functionality of the plugin, won't break so easily in the future as new code gets added. For testing KWin, uses the Qt Test Framework. Learning how to use the framework to create my own tests has been fairly simple and straightforward. Still, what exactly to test, and how to test it, was not so straightforward.

I learned along the way that I'd be creating integration tests, instead of unit tests. The tests don't reference the plugins directly; instead, they test the effect of the plugins on the system overall. That meant that things which required an instance of the plugin to test were not possible in this case. That included testing hotplug capability, or the number of applications that the plugin thinks have opened an input device. Thankfully there were few very important functionalities that could be tested!

Those include:

// Test system idle time reset. Prevents suspend
void testResetIdleTime();

// Test Controller To Keyboard Input Emulation
void testKeyboardMapping();

// Test Controller To Pointer/Mouse Input Emulation
void testPointerMapping();

I took a lot of inspiration from the buttonrebind_test.cpp.

System Settings KCM

It was agreed upon early on that this plugin would be opt-in, giving the user to enable and disable it when they choose. For that I created a KDE Control Module or KCM. Or better put, I built on the existing Game Controller KCM :) I added a new UI element, a toggle, for users to enable and disable the plugin. On the backend, I added a Q_PROPERTY, pluginEnabled, which is responsible for checking the kwinrc Plugin configs, and writing to them, in order to manage the state of this plugin. This is what it currently looks like (subject to change):

Handling Lizard Mode

This was probably one of the most daunting parts of the project for me when I first started. I knew that steamOS had its own way of handling input coming from the Steam Deck controller which has nothing to do with KDE or Steam app. This is what allows the controller to work for navigating the device in game and desktop mode. It's what is refered to as "Lizard Mode". The controller -> keyboard/pointer rebinds that I implemented was based off of the rebinds of this Lizard mode. Ideally using a controller to navigate desktop feels/works the same across all devices on KDE.

It's important that this new plugin not disrupt the current input system for the steamdeck. Originally I was warned that opening the fd for this device would cause Lizard mode to be disabled, which would mean I would have to either:

A: Find a way to disable Lizard mode and implement it from scratch...

B: Figure out what disabled Lizard mode on FD open and how to prevent / enable it as needed.

or C: Just change the flag for opening the controller fd and everything works just fine :)

Yup. After some testing and the smallest change I've had to make all project the Steam Deck controller was able to be detected by the plugin as well as its input detected! Even better than that, and not sure why I did not put this together before, Steam Deck already maps its input to keyboard/mouse. Duh. So this gamepad plugin doesn't need to worry about mapping and of Steam Deck input to just use it prevent system sleep when activity from that controller is detected.

During my testing, I discovered that Steam Deck shows up on the system as 5 different controllers. Each having their own purpose, one to handle analog input (triggers, trackpads, sticks) another to handle face buttons & D-pad, another for keyboard, etc.. These are used by the system depending on the users needs. Again, this made life a lot easier. This are logs from evtest and gamecontroller plugin:

At the start of this project I had adopted a child. Some of you reading this post might have met my child. It's named

As some put it:

Wow this is an ELEVEN (!) year old bug.

This issue is so old it can go to middle school.

and my favorite

Is there any hope that this bug will be fixed before the heat death of the universe?

By the time I met Bug328987, it had been around for ≈12 years. But still! In the eyes of KDE, it was a young, bright eyed, workflow-breaking bug, like all the bugs out there, and it had potential to be fixed! After months of back and forth with mentors, living in KDE matrix server like it were my personal Discord server, and learning how to not do things in the code base - I'm proud to say gamecontroller plugin properly addresses Bug328987. Bringing to an end its more than a decade long journey. They grow up so fast.

What’s next from here

• Integration into Kwin Proper: "Draft" label has been removed from MR and is ready for review.
• Final Fixes and Touch-up: Get Virtual Keyboard working, KCM toggle hot-plug, improve analog -> pointer emulation.

Reference documentation

• buttonrebind_test: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/blob/master/autotests/integration/buttonrebind_test.cpp
• GameController KCM: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/tree/master/kcms/gamecontroller
• Qt Test: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtest-overview.html
• Steam Controller Input: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamController/wiki/index/

Other useful links

KWin Gamepad Plugin: https://invent.kde.org/yorisoft/kwin/-/tree/work/yorisoft/gamepad-plugin/src/plugins/gamepad

Design Systems is a relatively new concept that aims to organize the way design happens in structured systems such as applications, websites, organizations, etc.

Historically, working with graphics for the digital age has been unorganized, lives in personal computers, is not collaborative and leads to uncoordinated design.

When the world of graphic design meets development, designers were often confused about why mockups are not followed, why colors are not the same, not the same shapes, etc. All the while, developers ask designers why they can’t provide something that more closely resembles the system they aim to change. It’s uncoordinated work entering a highly-systemized world.

Often, both sides are confused and system changes become much more difficult to achieve.

Meet UI-design applications. The first wave of these started with Sketch (for Mac). Sketch is a fast and powerful vector graphics application that introduced a number of advantages over traditional SVG editors meant for artistic work. For example:

• Infinite canvas
• Area bounding
• CSS-based design
• CSS-based organization
• Easy exports into various sizes
• Asset library management
• Collaborative design

Through their efforts, a sleuth of similar applications appeared in the scene, one building upon what the previous one lacked. Until we arrived at Figma, yes, Figma.

Figma did a few things right at the start of their development. They provided stronger asset library management, easier online collaboration, web-based editor with near-native speeds (If not faster now with the use of Web Assembly and other technologies), and variable and token management.

Through these enhancements Figma became the de-facto application to use for UI-oriented graphic development.

But what do they all do?

Put simply, these applications develop color, typography, spacings, shadows, icons, etc sets of organized assets. The assets have properties borrowed from development, such as, components, variables and tokens.

Designers can set up entire color libraries in a graphical way and then apply those colors to SVG graphics. Upon export, these graphics contain enough information for developers to more easily implement the design.

All the while, designers only have to spend time at the beginning of a project to set up all the assets required for designing. Additionally, Figma and other applications have been keenly focused on building graphical ways to deal with code-oriented complexities.

For example, Figma and PenPot detect variants creation and can express their values in dropdown menus that get created on the fly by the designers. If you create a button and your variants are size oriented, you can have a dropdown in the application’s UI that shows SM, MD, LG, XL, etc. These are huge time savers. Traditionally, designers would have to do a lot of copy/paste in their designs. With integrations like these, designers simply switch the variant for another and the design updates itself.

A similar idea happens with graphical components in these applications. Users are able to create a master version of an asset, let’s say a button, set up all of their locked and open parameters, colors, typography, margins, gutters, etc. When you make copies of this component, any changes made at the component level will be updated anywhere copies were placed. For very large design documents containing a company’s brand strategy, for example, these types of changes save countless hours of tedious copy/paste work.

Tokens

In recent times, and through various changes in the app-making industry, UI design applications have created the concept of tokens. Tokens are essentially named attributes for graphical components. They are often used as correlated language between design applications and systems.

For example, for Ocean Design, the team created tokens named thus:

pd.ref.color.primary50

• PD: Plasma Design
• REF: Reference color (Raw color value as opposed to applied color, which is called “sys”)
• PRIMARY50: Color role and its named color value in a line from light to dark values of the same color family.

This value can be replicated in Plasma. Through the storing of a master list of token values, Plasma can stay coordinated with graphic primary50, the system would have to do the same and just change the raw color value of that token without having to create new tokens, break coordination with the design system, or have to interpret information coming from designers.

Tokens are becoming more common use and reflect the desire of developers and designers to have even tighter integration between design and development.

Independence

Design Systems also allow for great independence between design and development. Having laid the groundwork to create coordinated design, applications like Figma and PenPot allow users to download asset libraries, reuse, and create UI. All without redefining the source library. It democratizes graphic design while keeping designers coordinated in their designs.

Developers looking to execute an application idea can much more easily create coordinate UI that supports their efforts. Developers would have much less design-oriented work to do and dedicate more into the features they want to deliver.

Ocean Design

Ocean Design aims not only to become a new UI design for Plasma but also plug in these powerful design applications into our development ecosystem and deliver UI to users faster, more coordinated, and more often.

If you’re interested in learning more about this effort, connect with our teams here:

• Plasma Visual Design Team (General chat about all things designs for the Plasma Desktop)
• Ocean Design Team (Focused discussion on Ocean Design)

Haruna version 1.5.0 is released.

The highlight of this release is the playlist, which got a lot of features:

• multiple playlists through tabs (Muhammet Sadık Uğursoy)
• drag and drop reordering (Muhammet Sadık Uğursoy)
• add files and folders through drag and drop (Muhammet Sadık Uğursoy)
• filtering (Muhammet Sadık Uğursoy)
• option to control playback behavior when a file ends: repeat playlist, repeat file, stop after last file in playlist, stop after current fille and play a random item

Another big change is to the Mouse settings, now you can use a mouse button + modifier key combo (ctrl + left click, shift + scroll up/down etc.).

Windows version:

• haruna-1.5.0-windows-gcc-x86_64.exe
• haruna-1.5.0-windows-gcc-x86_64.7z

Availability of other package formats depends on your distro and the people who package Haruna.

If you like Haruna then support its development: GitHub Sponsors | Liberapay | PayPal

Feature requests and bugs should be posted on bugs.kde.org, ignoring the bug report template can result in your report being ignored.

Changelog

1.5.0

Known issues

On Windows the Shortcuts and Custom Commands settings pages don't work.

Features

Settings

• General
  • added single instance setting to play new file when appending to the playlist
  • removed the "File dialog location setting"
• Playlist: added settings to control playback behavior
• Mouse
  • changed to allow modifier keys
  • added support for Mouse Forward and Back buttons
• Subtitles: if a relative folder name in the Load subtitle from list starts with an * (asterisk) then subtitles will be searched in all folders contaning the folder name. Example: If the Load subtitle from list contains an entry *sub and you have the following folders next to the video file subs, more subs and subtitles all of these folders will be searched.
• the settings window now has a minimum width and height

PlayList

• added support for multiple playlists
• items can be reordered manually through drag and dropdown
• items can be selected, ctrl+click to select multiple items, shift+click to select a range
• items can be filtered
• added setings to control playback behavior when a file ends
• when saving the playlist the file extension is set to m3u
• can add files and folders through drag and drop
• multiple files can be added through the option in the header
• hide playlist when mouse leaves window while maximized, prevents opening the playlist when moving mouse to another monitor

Playback

• if a file can't be played now an error is shown and playback stops instead of trying to play the next file (prevents a potential infinite loop when no file in the playlist can be played)
• can play files starting with a dot (hidden files)
• an error is shown when failing to get youtube playlist

Other

• mpris: add support for Shuffle and LoopStatus
• changed the action selection popup to use Kirigami.SearchDialog
• replaced the spinning icon with a progress bar and label
• the drop area of the video is split in 2 parts now
  • top part always appends to the default playlist
  • bottom part clears the default playlist and adds the dropped files and folders, when only one file is dropped it behaves as the open file action (clears the playlist and loads sibling files if enabled in settings)
• recent files are now stored in a sqlite database
• time positions used to restore videos are also stored in the database
• sleep is blocked on Windows too
• all strings should be translatable now

Bugfixes

• fixed the loop action, osd was not showing and progress bar was not highlighting the loop range
• before loading check that the file exists
• fixed loading wrong subtitles when using recursive subs
• fixed the progress bar getting taller when the chapters menu becomes visible
• fixed a bug where the video would pause after clicking the progress/seek bar

Beginning of 2025 I was searching through the version history of Qt OPC UA - trying to find out when a certain issue got introduced. At some point I was curious: How long does this thing go back?! Turns out that the first git commit is dated 25th of September 2015. Which means we have been doing this for over 10 years now!

Continue reading 10 Years of Qt OPC UA at basysKom GmbH.

Calamares is a Linux system installer used by a wide range of distro’s. It is in “community maintenance” mode, which means it depends on downstream code submissions and careful bug reports. Sometimes I have time to work on it, outside of any particular distro. It would be correct to say it is “slow going”. But that doesn’t mean there are no changes! Just this week a new language was requested, Luganda, bringing the total to 79. Not all of the languages have enough coverage to be included in the language drop-down, but all of them have translators working on bringing the installer to their locale. Welcome!

Whether you missed it the first time or simply want to relive the excitement, the entire Akademy 2025 experience is now available to rewatch online! From insightful keynotes and engaging panel discussions to technical talks, every moment of the event has been recorded and uploaded for the community to enjoy.

This year Akademy was packed with ideas, innovation, and collaboration that will shape the future of KDE and open source.

Watch now on your favorite platform:

• Watch on PeerTube
• Watch on YouTube

Enjoy!