After adding the ability to drag and reposition the Selection Action Bar on the canvas last week, I spent this week improving that interaction. I tackled the issue where users could drag the toolbar completely off-screen, making it inaccessible. This week was all about keeping the toolbar within the canvas boundaries.
Side note: This week I also updated the UI to resemble the mockup concept provided from the community.
Obstacles to Implementation
During testing I noticed that without boundaries, the draggable toolbar could end up hidden and inaccessible especially after window or sidebar resizing. This would make it frustrating for users because they would have to find the missing toolbar or toggle the feature off and back on just to relocate it. I wanted to make the toolbar's positioning restricted to canvas boundaries to keep the toolbar within users' vision.
Find Canvas Boundaries
Looking into the code, I found that the canvasWidget had a property QRect rect() which holds the dimensions of the canvas. We can use these values as the boundaries.
Add Boundaries to Drag Event
With canvasBounds defined, we can limit the drag operation to stay within the canvas dimensions. Based on the current canvas dimensions and during a drag event, we update the horizontal and vertical limits of the toolbar position with the use of qBound which provides an upper and lower boundary for a value. So if the coordinates of the toolbar were to go past the boundaries, qBound would return the defined upper or lower boundary value. On top of canvas boundaries, it is important to include the dimensions of the toolbar and buffer room in the calculation to make sure the UI elements are accessible.
// updated drag event with canvas boundaries
QPointnewPos=mouseEvent->pos()-d->dragStartOffset;QRectcanvasBounds=canvasWidget->rect();intactionBarWidth=125;intactionBarHeight=25;intbufferSpace=5;newPos.setX(qBound(canvasBounds.left()+bufferSpace,newPos.x(),canvasBounds.right()-actionBarWidth-bufferSpace));newPos.setY(qBound(canvasBounds.top()+bufferSpace,newPos.y(),canvasBounds.bottom()-actionBarHeight-bufferSpace));d->dragRectPosition=newPos;canvasWidget->update();returntrue;
Conclusion
This week was focused on improving the user experience and accessibility of the Selection Action Bar. I learned about some great Qt tools, like the properties of QWidget and Qt helper functions like qBound to help solve my problem! In the coming final weeks, I'll continue adding action buttons based on the list provided by the community.
Contact
To anyone reading this, please feel free to reach out to me. I'm always open to suggestions and thoughts on how to improve as a developer and as a person. Email: ross.erosales@gmail.com Matrix: @rossr:matrix.org
Since the last update two months ago
KDE Itinerary got support for manually added train and bus trips, a more flexible
alternative connection search, a new departure details view and a better location search, among many other improvements.
New Features
Manual trip entry
Being able to manually enter train or bus trips rather than selecting them from timetable
data has been often requested and is now finally available.
New menu for adding manual train, bus, ferry or flight connections.
For all modes of transportation there’s now two modes, manually entered data
where you can freely change departure and arrival locations and times, and schedule-backed
data for trips added from public transport searches where you can change the departure
and arrival stops only based on what’s actually in the schedule.
The latter is now also available for ferry trips.
Intermediate stops for a ferry.
The the various add and import actions have also been consolidated
in a single menu on the trip page. Importing backups remains available on the My Data page.
New combined add/import context menu.
Generalized alternative connection search
The alternative connection search is no longer limited to just trains and busses either,
it now can also be applied to ferry trips and flights. Likewise all modes of transportation
in the result can be added that way, that is also ferries and flights.
Additionally, the alternative connection search now allows to select any transfer stop
as the destination, unlike previously being limited to just the first or the last one.
Destination selector in alternative connection search.
New public transport departures view
There’s also an entirely new and much more detailed public transport departures view.
You’ll find that behind the new context menu on locations in the details pages.
New location context menu.
The departure list now automatically updates when looking at current departures. Also, you can select an
individual entry to get a whole set of additional information where available:
Service notes and alerts.
Occupancy levels.
The full trip run in a schedule view and and as a map.
The exact departure location on an indoor station map.
New departure details page.
Events
Earlier this month we had the first Transitous Hack Weekend
covering many topics relevant for Itinerary as well, ranging from making Transitous
long-term sustainable over improving the data coverage and quality to expanding the routing capabilities.
Everything mentioned in this section also benefits KTrip.
Geocoding
Geocoding is the process that happens behind the location search for journey planning.
That produced some confusing and undesired results in the past, and should noticeably
improve with the 25.08 release.
MOTIS, Transitous and
KPublicTransport gained support for geographic bias areas
for geocoding queries. That’s used in the location search based on the selected country.
With this you should now always have results from the right country at the top, while still not
having a hard filter which can be inconvenient in border areas.
Improved automatic backend selection for geocoding. This should fix the issue that in some
countries locations were only searched in a few small regions rather than the entire area.
Italy and the US were affected by this for example.
The city, region and country a result is in are now display in more cases in a second line under
the address or station name. This should further help to disambiguate results.
Online updates for public transport backend configurations
Access to public transport data still depends on over 70 operator services, besides Transitous.
Many of those aren’t really meant for 3rd party use and thus have no proper change management,
which means they can randomly change their URL, need a new custom certificate, need new or changed
parameters or just disappear entirely.
Adapting to a lot of that is merely a matter of changing configuration files part of KPublicTransport,
but so far it would take up to a month for those changes to reach users of release packages.
As this can severely impact the functionality we now have the infrastructure to update the KPublicTransport
backend configuration files as well as supporting data such as the coverage information without
waiting for the next software update.
This is meant to happen automatically eventually, while we are still testing this it’s available as
a context action in the public transport backend configuration page.
Pickup/dropoff constraints
Another new feature in MOTIS and Transitous are pickup and dropoff constraints. That is, a way to describe
that you cannot board or cannot alight from a vehicle at a given stop. While that isn’t all that common,
it can be quite important to know.
KPublicTransport also gained support for this, besides MOTIS also for OpenTripPlanner
and Hafas backends. In the UI you can see this in a few places then:
Changing the departure or arrival stop when editing only allows to select those stops that
actually allow boaring/alighting respectively.
Stops that allow neither boarding nor alighting are shown as such in the journey overview.
This sometimes occurs for border crossings or Switzerland advertising significant rail infrastructure.
Intermediate stops not allowing boarding or alighting.
Fixes & Improvements
Travel document extractor
Added or improved travel document extractors for Amadeus, Arriva, BlablaBus, booking.com, DB, Deutscher Alpenverein, DJH, DSB, Easyjet, Eurostar, Finnair, Flixbus, Globtour, Gopass, hostelworld, Leo Express, LeShuttle, MÁV, Opodo, Ouigo ES, Reenio, SNCB, SCNF, tickets.ua and Tito.
Improved matching and merging of bound and unbound train/bus trips.
Improved matching and merging of seat reservations with seats listed in different orders.
All of this has been made possible thanks to your travel document donations!
Public transport data
New or fixed backend configurations for KVB, South Tyrol, ZKS and the Varsinais-Suomen OpenTripPlanner instance.
Onboard API support for XiamenAir.
Fix parsing of bike carriage and wheelchair accessibility capabilities from OpenTripPlanner.
Fix parsing of flight numbers from Entur.
Support for more vehicle features from DB.
Correctly update country coverage list in the stop picker when enabling/disabling backends.
Filter out journey results with implausibly long detours. This gets rid of the “creative” connections
between the major stations in Paris by backends that can’t do local transport routing there.
Fix parsing of operator names from EFA.
Train station maps
Support for more OSM tagging schemes for elevators, tram infrastructure and platform sections.
Improved matching of platform names when faced with language specific leading abbreviations.
Cancel ongoing tile downloads before starting a new map load.
Better recovery from OSM level range tagging mistakes.
Better recovery from failed tile downloads.
Itinerary app
Added several more export options: Wallet passes, program memberships and standalone passes
can now also be exported, and single reservations can be exported as GPX file.
Reworked journey progress display, which is now active in all journey views and should be
much more reliable especially in the timeline view.
Standalone Wallet passes can now also be updated explicitly when containing an online update URL.
Improved default zoom in the journey and trip map views.
Fixed display of addresses with unresolved ISO 3166-2 region codes.
Determine a correct trip end time in more cases.
Fixed price display when there’s no home country configured.
Also show notes/service alerts in the stop info dialog on the journey map.
Fixed handling of Wallet passes with a case-sensitive identifier.
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.
Every week we cover the highlights of what’s happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
This week something was merged for Plasma 6.5 that a lot of people have been wanting for a long time: automatic day/night theme switching! And that's not all; we’ve got more visual customizability on offer too, plus a bunch more UI improvements and bug fixes. Check it all out here:
Notable New Features
Plasma 6.5.0
You can now have Plasma automatically switch to a different Global Theme at night! (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
You can now choose which Global Themes are shown on System Settings’ Quick Settings page, and turn on automatic day/night switching from there, too! (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
You can now choose to always see the light or dark variants of wallpapers that include both. Now there should be enough options for anyone: you can set dynamic wallpaper coloration to be based on the color scheme, based on the time of day, always light, or always dark. (David Redondo, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.4.4
If you’re a person who prefers to drag things to your panel itself rather than to a Task Manager widget, those panel icons are now removable via their context menus. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
On Wayland, files opened from KRunner in an already-running app now raise that app’s window as expected. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
On Wayland, the Orca screen reader now reads out changes to the Caps Lock state. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Moved System Settings’ Screen Edges pages into the Display & Monitor group, because it feels more natural to group it with screens than with the type of input device used to trigger its features. (Nate Graham, link)
If your system is set up for hibernation, you can now hibernate from the SDDM login screen. (Tobias Leupold, link)
Clicking “Connect” on a network in the Networks popup now closes any other open password fields for other networks, so there’s only one visible at a time. (Arnav Rawat, link)
Re-phrased the sorting/alignment options in Plasma’s desktop icon configuration window to make it clearer what they do. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.4.4
Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to freeze when spammed with many notifications containing images. (Paul Geerken, link)
Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to crash while loading stuff. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Fixed a bug in Plasma’s desktop that prevented dragging-and-dropping things inside folders while the desktop was scrollable. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)
Fixed a bug that caused panel editing via drag-and-drop to break in hilarious/awful ways when using a right-to-left language like Arabic or Hebrew. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Fixed several bugs in Plasma’s desktop that would cause icons to shift around on their own due to changing the screen arrangement or having certain combinations of panel and desktop file alignment settings. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)
Fixed a bug in Discover that caused it to get confused about which version of a Flatpak app was considered unstable or outdated when the system has multiple Flatpak remotes set up. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Fixed two bugs involving renaming desktop files: one that made it impossible to rename symlinks to desktop files installed at the system level or generally without write permission, and another one that made rename jobs sometimes just kind of fail. (Akseli Lahtinen, link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a bug that prevented Plasma widget configuration windows from restoring their saved sizes as expected. (David Redondo, link)
Fixed a bug that caused you to have to leave System Settings’ Colors page and then go back to it after creating a copy of a color scheme, because it didn’t show up immediately. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Fixed two cases where Plasma could crash in Activities-related functionality. (Daniel Hast, link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a bug in the free space checker that would cause it to inappropriately try to mount unmounted network shares defined in /etc/fstab, which could lead to hangs when there was no network connectivity. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Fixed a bug in System Settings’ Region & Language page that caused a visual glitch when using the system with a right-to-left language like Arabic or Hebrew. (Nate Graham, link)
Frameworks 6.17
Fixed a regression that made it impossible to drag files from Plasma’s desktop on one screen to another one. The fix for this also fixed some bugs in Dolphin, too. (Akseli Lahtinen, link 1 and link 2)
Qt 6.8.4
Fixed a Qt bug that caused KWin on X11 to sometimes consume excessive CPU resources when locking or turning off the screen. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed a bug that could cause the plasmawindowed developer tool to crash when viewing the System Tray widget. (Chris Xiong, 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! 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.
It’s been almost two years since my last update on this project, what changed? And if you aren’t familiar with what I’ve been working on, here’s a quick recap.
It has a fatal flaw that a lot of non-Wacom tablets share though, it doesn’t work that well on Linux! To be more specific, it “works” but has a few problems:
You can’t rebind the pad buttons easily, because it starts in a “compatibility mode” that can only send pre-defined keyboard buttons.
Using the second stylus button prevents further stylus input. (Before I fixed that, I would train myself not to press that button 🙈)
The two dials do not function, and if they did they aren’t rebindable anyway.
That is not great, especially since it’s not the cheapest graphics tablet on the market. So it really sucks that artists can’t take advantage of all of it’s features on the best operating system. You can achieve some parity with Windows if you use XP-Pen’s proprietary user-space driver (which works on Wayland BTW.) This solution isn’t satisfying though - I want this thing to work out of the box, using open-source software ❤️
Linux
I have completed the patch for the kernel to add support for this specific tablet. After sitting it on it for a while (due to being busy with other things.) I’m happy to announce it’s merged and should be generally available in the upcoming Linux 6.17 release 🎉
Thank you to the original author Aren Villanueva who wrote the original DIGImend kernel driver. I took his work, rebased it on top of the existing uclogic driver and changed how the many keys and dials were handled among other changes. Some of this work was covered in previous entries in this series, if you’re interested.
What this means is regardless of your desktop environment, this tablet is properly initialized and all of the flaws listed in the hardware section will be fixed.
libwacom
I added a descriptor to libwacom for this tablet, which means it shows the correct configuration options under KDE Plasma and GNOME. For example, it will show that the pen has two buttons and not three (which is the fallback):
libinput
I added support for tablet dials in libinput. In layman terms, this means desktop environments like GNOME and KDE are now aware of this feature on your tablet. This has huge implications outside of this specific tablet, for example certain HUION devices also benefit from this. More information on how KDE Plasma uses this is explained in a later section.
Wayland
Thanks to work by Peter Hutterer, the Tablet protocol in Wayland now has support for tablet dials. What this means is that applications can now read tablet dial input and do whatever they want with it, like making it zoom in and out of a canvas.
KDE Plasma
Thanks to work by Nicolas Fella, KWin (the compositor in KDE Plasma) is now dial-aware and can send them to Wayland-enabled applications beginning in Plasma 6.4. Because of the aformentioned lack of application support however, I added a feature in KDE Plasma 6.5 to rebind dials to custom user actions:
The XP-PEN software allows you to do this too, so having a built-in solution in KDE Plasma would be great! I did just that, and added support for rebinding dials which will show up in the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.5 release. Making them user configurable is meant as a “bridge”, as I’m not aware of any applications supporting dials yet.
With this final piece - from top-to-bottom - the entire Linux graphics tablet stack can now take advantage of relative dials like any other hardware feature 🎉
Conclusion
I want to make it clear (especially if you don’t know me) that this isn’t some hack, or a rushed driver. This is thanks to years of effort, and from multiple parties and ecosystems. I also literally use this driver and KDE Plasma for my hobbies every day, I know it works first-hand.
I also hope this series showcases that the graphics tablet infrastructure in Linux is not stagnant, but actively being worked on by super-talented people every day. In a theoretical future distribution release that has Linux 6.17 and KDE Plasma 6.5, this tablet will work out-of-the-box. (And for other hardware, it’s only a matter of time!) We can make the Linux desktop not just usable for artists, but we can executing it better than anything else out there. No more crappy driver software, tablets will work out of the box on an operating system that actually respects you ❤️
To Nicolas, Peter and Aren - you can redeem a beer or drink of choice at your earliest convenience 🍻
If this series has been fascinating for you, then I highly suggest making plans to watch my Akademy 2025 talk in Berlin or online about bridging the gap for artists using Linux and KDE Plasma. I’m going to be covering the amazing progress - especially in our KDE Plasma 6.x series - that’s relevant to artists big and small, and also discuss plans for the long road ahead. You also need to follow the KDE account on Mastodon and Bluesky if you haven’t already, where we post announcements and sometimes call-to-actions like our recent push to contribute data about graphics tablet hardware!
I also want to remind everyone that one of KDE’s current goals is about input, and as it’s Goal Champion I’ve been volunteering and organizing to fix issues like the ones seen above. If you are having trouble with your graphics tablet on the KDE Plasma Wayland session (and it’s our fault) then we want to know! Or if you’re super happy with KDE and nothing is wrong, we wouldn’t mind hearing about that was well 🐸
If you’re still addicted to me hearing me talk about improving stuff, here is a sneak peek of the hardware I’m testing in KDE Plasma next:
Apart from setting up a new open source project, it is important to understand how the application works in order to make the changes you need. In this blog I will go over how I find code, understand the application, and my progress so far with the Selection Action Bar.
Krita's codebase is massive, so don't expect to understand everything in one day. What is important is knowing how to find code you need to make the improvements you want. Above are some tools I use when looking for code. I would use the command line or QTCreator search functionality to reverse search strings that are displayed in Krita. This helps me find buttons, dropdowns, and tools. When I want to understand the functionality of the application, I will add qDebug in the code. This allows me to perform an action when Krtia is running and display debug information about the functions I added qDebug to.
Progress
Through the use of the the useful tools above, I was able to make the base UI of the floating toolbar in Krita by identifying QPainter class that created the Assistant Tool. I wanted to use Assistant tool as a reference and recreate a similar UI look. For quick learning purposes and proof of concept, when an Assistant Tool widget is active, the floating toolbar is also generated on screen. Below is a proof of concept for the Selection Action Bar. I used QPainter to 'draw' onto the KisCanvas2 class. This is like using a paintbrush (QPainter) and painting on a canvas (KisCanvas2). There will still need to be some more UI clean up, however I wanted to present my learnings so far.
Conclusion
Making changes in Krita can be challenging, but by using a few simple tools it can make hours turn into minutes for searching what you need. Again, "the hardest part is finding the resources to be successful". I hope this blog post helps whoever is in need of searching Krita or any C++ codebase.
Contact
To anyone reading this, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m always open to suggestions and thoughts on how to improve as a developer and as a person. Email: ross.erosales@gmail.com Matrix: @rossr:matrix.org
I’m reaching out during a challenging time in my life to ask for your support. This year has been particularly difficult as I’ve been out of work for most of it due to a broken arm and a serious MRSA infection that required extensive treatment and recovery time.
Current Situation
While I’ve been recovering, I’ve been actively working to maintain and improve my professional skills by contributing to open source software projects. These contributions help me stay current with industry trends and demonstrate my ongoing commitment to my field, but unfortunately, they don’t provide the income I need to cover my basic living expenses.
Despite my efforts, I’m still struggling to secure employment, and I’m falling behind on essential bills including:
Rent/mortgage payments
Utilities
Medical expenses
Basic living costs
How You Can Help
Any financial assistance, no matter the amount, would make a meaningful difference in helping me stay afloat during this job search. Your support would allow me to:
Keep my housing stable
Maintain essential services
Focus fully on finding employment without the constant stress of unpaid bills
Continue contributing to the open source community
Moving Forward
I’m actively job searching and interviewing, and I’m confident that I’ll be back on my feet soon. Your temporary support during this difficult period would mean the world to me and help bridge the gap until I can secure stable employment.
If you’re able to contribute, GoFundMe . If you’re unable to donate, I completely understand, and sharing this request with others who might be able to help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and for considering helping me during this challenging time.
This week I focused on making the Selection Action Bar draggable directly on the canvas. This would let the user reposition the toolbar that is best for their workflow.
Obstacles to Implementation
Up to this point adding elements on Krita using Qt was straightforward however making these elements interact and respond to mouse click events needed some deeper diving. The goal of this part of the Selection Action Bar was to allow users to click and drag the tool to reposition it anywhere within the canvas. In order to implement this I asked myself some questions: Where does Qt handle click events? How can the UI elements dynamically update their position?
My research led me to Qt’s event system. One of the key concepts I learned about was event filters. Event filters are able to intercept events that are sent to another object. In our case, we can intercept the click events that are sent to the canvas and process that event to update the positions of our floating toolbar.
Since canvas was passed in through the KisSelectionAssistantsDecoration class, we can install an event filter on the canvas object, specifically the canvasWidget to intercept the mouse events.
// install event filter on canvasWidget, so KisSelectionAssistantsDecoration class (aka 'this') can look at event first
canvasWidget->installEventFilter(this);
After learning about event filters, I needed to learn how to handle the mouse events. By distinguishing user inputs of MouseButtonPress, MouseMove, and MouseButtonRelease, I was able to update the position of the floating bar. To keep things simple, imagine a rectangle on a 2D grid. Between the top left point of the rectangle and a point we click inside the rectangle is called an offset. This offset is to make sure that when we click and drag from within the rectangle, we are updating the position of the rectangle.
Get offset = mouse position (click) - rectangle position Update rectangle position = mouse position (click + drag) - offset Mouse button release = stop updating rectangle
Working concept
With this major change, the Selection Action Bar is starting to feel like a full feature. Currently, we are able to activate selection actions, move the toolbar to a desirable position on canvas, and toggle it on and off via Krita settings.
Conclusion
This week really pushed me to explore how to handle events and how to make elements move in Krita! As I continue building out the Selection Action Bar every week, I start to understand how complex a ‘simple’ change could be. Next week I plan to improve on the movement of the toolbar by restricting its dragging area within the canvas.
Contact
To anyone reading this, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m always open to suggestions and thoughts on how to improve as a developer and as a person.
Email: ross.erosales@gmail.com
Matrix: @rossr:matrix.org
I am excited to announce a major improvement to the Clazy project: Clazy now integrates seamlessly with Clang-Tidy!
🧩 One Toolchain, All the Checks
Clazy now provides a plugin (on Unix ClazyClangTidy.so) that allows all its checks to run inside clang-tidy, unifying your static analysis workflow.
You no longer need to run two separate tools — just configure Clazy’s checks through clang-tidy itself.
This change needed quite a few refactorings to make the existing Clazy codebase more adaptable.
In total, changes were spread out to 9 different pull requests to gradually implement the needed changes.
Besides implementing the functionality, the testsuite was also adapted to ensure Clazy’s clang-tidy provides proper results.
✅ How to Use
To load the plugin:
clang-tidy -load=ClazyClangTidy.so ...
🔒 If the plugin isn’t in a standard library path, either add it to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH or provide an absolute path to the plugin file.
Unfortunately, Clang-Tidy needs to have Clazy checks enabled explicitly and does not have a concept of “levels” to group checks.
While wildcards like clazy-* would also work, it enables all manual-level checks. Those have more false positives and can hurt performance.
As a helper, you can export environment variables containing the check names to concatenate the desired combination:
Checks in Clang-Tidy can be disabled when prefixing them with “-“, whereas Clazy uses “no-“ prefixes.
An example clang-tidy command to use all level0 checks, with overloaded-signal being disabled and the qt-keywords manual check being enabled:
In case you want to speed up linting in the project, run-clang-tidy can be used for parallel execution.
🚧✨ Limitations & Tricks
Unlike using Clazy directly, clang-tidy has its own filter mechanism to only emit warnings from files that were provided as an input.
This means if a warning is emitted from a header file and not the “.cpp” file you provide as an input, Clang-Tidy will suppress it.
To see those warnings -header-filter=".*" can be added to the command.
💡💬 Getting it & Feedback
The Clang-Tidy plugin is currently not released, and some additional development on various checks is happening.
For trying it out, one has to compile the project from source. It is just a simple CMake setup - promise ;)
See the instructions for more details: https://invent.kde.org/sdk/clazy/#build-instructions
Every week we cover the highlights of what’s happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
This week UI and feature work for Plasma 6.5 continued to progress, along with a bunch of nice technical changes and bug fixes. Have a look:
Notable New Features
Plasma 6.5.0
For supported printers, plasma now tells you when the printer is low on ink! (Mike Noe, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.4.4
Notifications marked as “low priority” or that you’ve manually configured to now show up in the history now selectively ignore that, and do show up in the history when they arrived during Do Not Disturb mode. The reason for this is that otherwise these notifications would simply vanish, and you’d never get a chance to see them at all. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
The hitboxes for items on the desktop now match the visual styling; no more clicking in an empty-looking place and getting a file or folder selected despite no hover effect! (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Key repeat has been disabled for a number of global shortcuts that could trigger rapid full-screen flashing if you held down the shortcut, because this risks causing seizures in photosensitive people. Affected actions include toggling Overview, full screen mode, maximize/de-maximize, and inverting the screen colors. (Ritchie Frodomar, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
The “Someone started sharing this screen” notification now appears only after the connection has been fully established and screen sharing has actually begun, rather than at the moment when the connection was initiated. (David Edmundson, link)
The “Confirm deleting network connection” dialog now uses standard KDE styling. (Renner 03, link)
The spacing between menu items in the Global Menu widget is now more consistent with menus in individual windows. (Rebecca Bee, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Soon
Plasma Browser Integration’s browser plugin no longer breaks random features or various known video conferencing websites when its enhanced media controls setting is active. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Plasma 6.4.4
Fixed a bug that caused KWin to crash on the next login when you enable the magnifier effect but don’t use it to zoom in at all before logging out. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a bug that caused KWin to crash on login when run in a QEMU virtual machine using the Bochs video driver. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed the Global Menu widget’s single-button mode for X11 users too. (Kishore Gopalakrishnan, link)
The search field in the Wayland version of the Global Menu widget once again works. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Fixed a bug in the KDE’s implementation of the Global Shortcuts XDG portal that confused apps into thinking they had no shortcuts after you accepted the dialog to make some changes. (David Redondo, link)
Fixed a bug causing notifications in the history view to not appear in sequential order. In case you remember this previously being advertised as fixed, it was, because we worked around a Qt bug that was causing the issue. Well, that Qt bug got fixed, causing our workaround to re-introduce the bug! Software development is hard. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Plasma Browser Integration’s built-in Share feature once again works. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Cross-app window activation/raising now works more reliably in a couple cases, and also now works for files opened from KRunner-powered searches except for the Recent Documents runner, which is also being worked on. (Kai Uwe Broulik and Xaver Hugl, link 1, link 2, and link 3)
Fixed a bug that prevented the virtual keyboard from being able to enter text into the Application Dashboard widget’s search field. (Arnav Rawat, link)
Fixed a layout bug that caused the contents of the “Set up a printer connection” page to visually overflow when opened from the “New printer detected” notification. (Mike Noe, link)
When accessed from Plasma (not System Settings), wallpaper grid items now follow the Plasma color scheme, rather than the app color scheme. This is relevant when using a mixed light/dark Global Theme like Breeze Twilight. (David Redondo, link)
Frameworks 6.17
KRunner-powered search results once again take into account frequency of use. (Nate Graham, link)
Fixed a source of inotify leaks caused by reconfiguring the Plasma Desktop or the Folder View widget to show a different folder. (Harald Sitter, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Implemented support the the pointer_warp_v1 (“Pointer Warp”) Wayland protocol that allows apps to ask the compositor to move the pointer. (Xaver Hugl, link)
XDG portal-using apps can now explicitly request a screencast or remote desktop session of a new virtual output. (David Redondo, link 1 and link 2)
Added some more autotests for basic Plasma widget loading functionality. (Nicolas Fella, link)
The clipboard configuration window’s size and position are now stored in the state config file, not the settings config file. (Nicolas Fella, 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! 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.
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