In a previous post I talked about using the QML Language Server for KDE development. Since writing that post a few things happened, so it’s time for an update.

I mentioned that when using Kate qmlls should work out of the box when opening a QML file. That’s mostly true, there is one problem though. Depending on your distribution the binary for qmlls has a different name. Sometimes it’s qmlls, sometimes qmlls6 or qmlls-qt6. You may need to adjust the LSP Server settings in Kate to match the name on your system.

In order for qmlls to find types that are defined in your application’s C++ code those must not only be declaratively registered, qmlls also needs to be told where to find the type information. Fortunately Qt 6.7 comes with a handy way to do that. By passing -DQT_QML_GENERATE_QMLLS_INI=ON to CMake you get an appropriate config file generated. This will be placed into the project’s source directory but is specific to your setup, so add that to your gitignore file (PS: You can set up a global gitignore file for your system, so you don’t need to add this to all your projects). Unfortunately the initial implementation produced wrong configurations for some modules, but this is fixed in Qt 6.7.2.

A problem I mentioned is that qmlls doesn’t find modules that are not installed into the same path as Qt. With Qt 6.8 there will be two new options. The -I parameter allows to add custom import paths to qmlls’ search paths. The -E parameter makes qmlls consider the value of the QML_IMPORT_PATH environment variable for its search paths.

In order for qmlls to work properly modules need to be created using the CMake API and use declarative type registration. Since writing the last post some KDE modules have been converted to those, but there’s still more to do.

Thanks to the QML team for those swift improvements!

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-19.

Heat Death of the Internet - takahē

Tags: tech, internet, web, satire, criticism

Obviously a satire, some of it feels eerily real though.

https://www.takahe.org.nz/heat-death-of-the-internet/

“AI now beats humans at basic tasks”: Really?

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, research, benchmarking, criticism

Nice article. It’s a good reminder that the benchmarks used to evaluate generative AI systems have many caveats.

https://aiguide.substack.com/p/ai-now-beats-humans-at-basic-tasks

Did GitHub Copilot really increase my productivity?

Tags: tech, ai, copilot, productivity

Interesting data point. This is a very specialized experience but the fact that those systems are kind of random and slow clearly play a good part in limiting the productivity you could get from them.

https://trace.yshui.dev/2024-05-copilot.html

AI Copilots Are Changing How Coding Is Taught - IEEE Spectrum

Tags: tech, ai, copilot, ethics, programming, teaching, learning

Well, maybe our profession will make a leap forward. If instead of drinking the generative AI cool aid, if we really get a whole cohort of programmers better at critical skills (ethical issues, being skeptical of their tools, testing, software design and debugging) it’ll clearly be some progress. Let’s hope we don’t fall in the obvious pitfalls.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-coding

Machine Unlearning in 2024 - Ken Ziyu Liu - Stanford Computer Science

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copyright, gdpr

Interesting questions and state of the art around model “unlearning”. This became important due to the opacity of data sets used to train some models. It’ll also be important in any case for managing models over time.

https://ai.stanford.edu/~kzliu/blog/unlearning

Systemd heads for a big round-number release [LWN.net]

Tags: tech, linux, systemd

Indeed the next systemd release feels feature packed. Definitely to keep an eye on.

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/971866/f244aee59d4d6a66/

UEFI, BIOS, and other confusing x86 PC (firmware) terms

Tags: tech, bios, uefi, hardware

Confused? Well, not surprising we mostly use those terms with very lax definitions.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/UEFIAndBIOSAndOtherPCTerms

It’s always TCP_NODELAY. Every damn time. - Marc’s Blog

Tags: tech, tcp, networking

Getting network protocols right is definitely difficult.

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/05/09/nagle.html

Why Full Text Search is Hard

Tags: tech, language, search

If you wonder why information retrieval from natural language texts is a tough domain, here is a short article listing the important things to keep in mind.

https://transactional.blog/blog/2023-why-full-text-search-is-hard

All error messages are necessarily bad to some degree

Tags: tech, failure, ux

Not a reason to make no effort into having as proper error messages as possible. Still there’s some truth there that trying to have a really useful error message is a fool’s errand.

https://www.haskellforall.com/2024/05/all-error-messages-are-necessarily-bad.html?m=1

pyspread

Tags: tech, python, qt, spreadsheets, tools

Looks like a fun spreadsheet tool where you can use Python in any cell.

https://pyspread.gitlab.io/

The UX of UUIDs | Unkey

Tags: tech, uuid, encodings

Interesting set of tricks around UUIDs to make them easier to manipulate.

https://www.unkey.com/blog/uuid-ux

Build your own HTMX

Tags: tech, web, frontend, htmx

Excellent exercise in understanding how HTMX works under the hood.

https://joshi.monster/posts/build-your-own-htmx/

No, I don’t want to fill out your contact form - Adam Jones’s Blog

Tags: tech, web, email

Good exploration of the many ways contact forms fail us regularly. Also shows a few cases where you might still want to us them… in most cases you shouldn’t.

https://adamjones.me/blog/dont-use-contact-forms/

What You Need to Know about Modern CSS (Spring 2024 Edition) – Frontend Masters Boost

Tags: tech, web, frontend, css

Looks like a good reference about everything which can be done with the latest CSS evolutions.

https://frontendmasters.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-modern-css-spring-2024-edition/

Google Testing Blog: Test Failures Should Be Actionable

Tags: tech, tests

Good advice indeed. Having asserts using appropriate matchers can go a long way understanding what went wrong.

https://testing.googleblog.com/2024/05/test-failures-should-be-actionable.html?m=1

Simplicity is An Advantage but Sadly Complexity Sells Better

Tags: tech, complexity

Definitely this. We tend to like complexity too much as a profession and field. It’s also a good reminder that the complexity of the problem and the complexity of the solution shouldn’t be conflated.

https://eugeneyan.com/writing/simplicity/

Programming mantras are proverbs - lukeplant.me.uk

Tags: tech, programming, culture, craftsmanship

Interesting take about the mantras often used in our profession. They shouldn’t be treated as laws, but as proverbs carrying a piece of contextual wisdom. It’s thus unsurprising that they tend to contradict each other. This contradiction should make us pause and think.

https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/programming-mantras-are-proverbs/

Refactor: Inline-Adjust-Extract - XP123

Tags: tech, programming, refactoring

Since there’s a clear tendency in the developers I meet to “extract at all costs”, this is a good reminder that sometimes you need to inline the code first. This very often brings better clarity in the context of use. In turns this leads to a better final extraction.

https://xp123.com/refactor-inline-adjust-extract/

Bye for now!

Kirigami Addons 1.2 is out with some accessibility fixes and one new component: FloatingToolBar.

Accessibility

During the accessibility sprint, there was an effort to ensure the date and time pickers were actually accessible. Aside from improving the screen reader support, this also allow to write Selenium integration tests which uses these components in Itinerary. Thanks Volker, David Redundo and others for working on this!

FloatingToolBar

Mathis and I worked on a new addition to Kirigami Addons adding to the existing FloatingButton and DoubleFloatingButton components. This component is perfect to add tool to editing and drawing areas and can either contain a simple RowLayout/ColumnLayout containing ToolButtons or a Kirigami.ActionToolBar.

import org.kde.kirigamiaddons.components
import org.kde.kirigami as Kirigami

FloatingToolBar {
 contentItem: Kirigami.ActionToolBar {
 actions: [
 Kirigami.Action {
 ...
 }
 ]
 }
}

Dialogs

With the style used by FormCardDialog and MessageDialog merged in Kirigami and soon in qqc2-desktop-style too, I did some changes to the FormCardDialog and MessageDialog to use the same padding as Kirigami.Dialog.

MessageDialog now works better on mobile with the layout adapting itself to the dialog size.

Aditionally similar to KMessageBox, MessageDialog has an optional “don’t show again” option which can be enabled by setting the dontShowAgainName property similar to the KMessageBox api.

I also prepared these two components to work as standalone windows which is likely to come with this Qt 6.8 change request.

CategorizedSettings

Jonah fixed a bug where it would be impossible to escape the settings on mobile.

Documentation

I added more screenshot to the API documentation and updated the TableView example app to use a ‘frameless’ style.

Qt 6.7 support

This release also brings support for Qt 6.7 on Android as this release introduced an API and ABI change to the Android code. Thanks Joshua for tackling this issue.

The new Ubuntu LTS was released in April, congratulations to all involved with that. I know Scarlett worked hard to get Kubuntu back into shape so do if that a try if you want a stable Plasma 5 desktop.

In the KDE neon project we don’t like to sit still for long so we are now building all our KDE packages on Ubuntu Noble, versioned 24.04. This always takes longer than it feels like it should, mostly because it’s a moving target to keep everything compiled as more KDE software gets released, so no promises on when it’ll be ready but we’ll try to be fast because the old Ubuntu base of jammy (22.04) is showing its age with projects like Krita no longer able to compile there.

So far the main issues are all the changes needed for 64-bit time_t to fix the y2k38 problem, we know you wouldn’t want your clocks to zero out in 2038.

KDE has a symbiotic relationship with many linux distros, since while we develop our software we also use particular versions of linux, I personally use archlinux as my distro of choice for many years being the only distro that I manage to bare for more than six months ( and I believe I am using it for more than 15 years already so that counts).

The "recipe" for packaging KDE software for arch is big, because we are big, and packaging large amounts of software is no easy feat, so me and Antonio Rojas started to update the build scripts to be less manual and less error prone. All the versions of Plasma 6 that have been packaged for arch are using this scripts in one way or another (or manually when we broke everything :)

This work is being done in a separate branch to not break the current workflow, but things are looking good and we hope to merge this in master soon, so that deploying newer versions of KDE software for arch will be a single command, meaning more time for the developers and less time creating packages.

KGraphViewer 2.5.0 has been just released! The main focus of this release is the port to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6 as well as general code modernisation, but of course some bugs have been squashed too. The full changelog can be found below.

About KGraphViewer:

KGraphViewer is a Graphviz DOT graph file viewer, aimed to replace the other outdated Graphviz tools. Graphs are commonly used in scientific domains and particularly in computer science.

You can learn more at https://apps.kde.org/kgraphviewer/

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kgraphviewer/2.5.0/
SHA256: 872bee63fb4df6f7fb2b4eaf02ff825cba3ca953ac02509a287fe5cd0f1e2b69
Signed by: D81C 0CB3 8EB7 25EF 6691 C385 BB46 3350 D6EF 31EF Heiko Becker heiko.becker@kde.org
https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/release-keyring/-/raw/master/keys/heikobecker@key1.asc

Full changelog:

• appstream: Add upcoming 2.5.0 release
• Brush up menu & action terms a bit
• Add icons to more actions & submenus
• Update homepage URL in README
• Remove some outdated/unused files
• Avoid double look-ups in maps, use iterator returned from find method
• Add widget parent to QMenu instances
• DotGraphView: create popup menu only on demand
• Share also zoom actions between DotGraphView & KGraphViewerPart
• Use enum QColor constructor instead of string based one
• Use KStandardAction convenience creation methods, parent all to collecitions
• Drop file_open_recent from ui.rc files, given KStandardAction toolbar magic
• Use more member-function-pointer-based Qt signal/slot connects
• Port away from auto-casting from ascii strings
• Fix missing closing tags in D-Bus API xml files
• Use QList directly instead of Qt6-times alias QVector
• Make manual build & install fully optional
• Update links to graphviz website
• Fix handling file cmdl arguments with relative path
• Fix bad defaults for fonts, also for colors, shapes & style
• KGraphViewerPart CMake config file: drop KGraphViewerPart_INCLUDE_DIRS
• Bump version & SO version for first Qt6-based release
• Drop support for Qt5/KF5
• Clean up includes & forward declares
• Do not use Qt modules includes
• Deploy custom pixmaps as Qt resource
• Printing page settings: remove custom broken window icon
• Printing page settings: replace "lock ratio" button with checkbox
• KGraphViewer KPart metadata: use normal app display name as name
• Drop libkgraphviewer appstream file, no other libraries provide some
• Set target properties right after declaring the target
• Remove unused version header includes
• Drop code for no longer supported KF versions
• Fix another wrong min Qt version variable name usage
• Use ECMDeprecationSettings
• Port away from deprecated QMouseEvent::globalPos()
• KGraphEditor: fix bad port to QMessageBox::question
• Use Q_EMIT instead of emit
• Switch to ECM required-default KDE_COMPILERSETTINGS_LEVEL
• Remove unneeded ; after Q_DECLARE_PRIVATE() & Q_DECLARE_PUBLIC()
• Use more nullptr
• Fix wrong min Qt version variable name usage
• Add Qt6/KF6 build support
• Remove unneeded QApp::setOrganizationDomain, dupl. KAboutData::setApp...Data
• appdate: use desktop-application type, add developer & launchable tags
• Update homepage to apps.kde.org
• Port away from deprecated QDesktopWidget
• Port away from deprecated QPrinter::setOrientation()
• Port away from deprecated QPrinter::numCopies()
• Port away from deprecated operator+(Qt::Modifier, Qt::Key)
• Port away from deprecated QWheelEvent::delta()/orientation()
• Port away from deprecated signal QButtonGroup::buttonClicked(int)
• Port away from deprecated I18N_NOOP2
• Port away from deprecated KXmlGui RESTORE() macro
• Bump min required Qt/KF to 5.15.2/5.100.0
• Port away from deprecated QLayout::setMargin()
• Add missing includes for Qt6 build
• Remove unused include
• Drop usage of outdated no-effect QGraphicsView::DontClipPainter
• Port away from deprecated QStyle::PM_DefaultLayoutSpacing
• change QFontMetrics.width with horizontalAdvance
• replace QRegExp by QRegularExpression
• Use for instead of foreach
• Replace deprecated endl with Qt variant
• remove -qt5 suffix
• change path in gitlab-ci
• snapcraft: initial import snapcraft files.
• kgrapheditor: deploy ui.rc file as Qt resource
• Remove Designer's "." normaloff file data from icon properties in .ui files
• Add explicit moc includes to sources for moc-covered headers
• doc: use a non-deprecated entity for Frameworks
• Add releases
• Add Open Age Content Rating
• Remove warning about unknown DOT fonts
• Remove custom action to configure shortcuts
• Init graph members
• Remove unused graphviz/gvc.h includes
• Add KI18n and KDocTools macro to install translations
• Port away from deprecated KMessageBox Yes/No API
• Remove arcconfig
• Add interface library for part include dir
• Handle Qt6 change around enterEvent
• Add missing include
• Remove unused include
• Port away from deprecated KPluginLoader
• Port away from deprecated endl
• Adapt build system to Qt6
• Remove pointless/broken icons
• Enable highdpi pixmaps
• Add git blame ignore file
• Add GitLab CI
• Use ecm_qt_install_logging_categories to generate kdebugsettings file
• Drop code variants for no longer supported Qt/KF versions
• Use more target-centric cmake code
• Update .gitignore
• Use non-deprecated KDEInstallDirs variables
• Port away from deprecated KSelectAction::triggered(QString)
• Documentation updates - Update date and fix version numbers - Fix tagging and sync option's text
• Port away from deprecated QMatrix
• KAboutData::setupCommandLine() already adds help & version options
• kgraphviewer_part.desktop: remove unused key Categories
• Use .in suffix for header file that is passed to configure_file()
• Port away from deprecated signal QProcess::error
• Use default window flags for QInputDialog::getText
• Port away from deprecated KEditToolBar::newToolbarConfig
• Port to new KPluginMetaData-based KParts API
• Deploy ui.rc files as Qt resources
• Remove broken argument SERVICE_TYPES kpart.desktop from desktop2json call
• Handle Graphviz capitalization changes
• Capitalize Graphviz consistently
• cmake: Simplify and improve FindGraphviz.cmake
• Add KDE ClangFormat on CMake and run the target
• Fix link: ui.html -> menus.html
• Draw empty arrowheads closed
• add genericname for use on kde.org/applications
• Set StartupWMClass in desktop file
• Use more https in links (and update outdated ones)

Massif Visualizer 0.8.0 has been just released! The main focus of this release is the port to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6 as well as general code modernisation, but of course some bugs have been squashed too. The full changelog can be found below.

About Massif Visualizer:

Massif Visualizer is a tool that - who'd guess that - visualizes massif data. You run your application in Valgrind with --tool=massif and then open the generated file in the visualizer. Gzip or Bzip2 compressed massif files can also be opened transparently.

You can learn more at https://apps.kde.org/massif-visualizer/

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/massif-visualizer/0.8.0/src/
SHA256: 5fad3f0e0d9fbb6bc8cfb744cb4e2c99f231d57ee0dd66dd594d36c2cc588a80
Signed by: D81C 0CB3 8EB7 25EF 6691 C385 BB46 3350 D6EF 31EF Heiko Becker heiko.becker@kde.org
https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/release-keyring/-/raw/master/keys/heikobecker@key1.asc

Full changelog:

• appdata: Add upcoming 0.8.0 release
• Unbreak KDE CI config: require "@stable-kf6" branch of kgraphviewer
• KDE CI: require tests to pass (for platforms where they currently do)
• KDE CI config: require "@same" branch of kgraphviewer
• appstream: use new id without hyphen
• Port away from QScopedPointer
• ParseWorker: fix switched error title & text for empty data file
• Overhaul action & title texts to follow KDE HIG, add more UI marker contexts
• Config dialog: align "Shorten Templates" checkbox with form fields
• Config dialog: avoid full-width comboboxes, use system style
• Update outdated Kate editor setting replace-trailing-space-save
• Use more function-pointer-based Qt signal/slot connections
• Remove some unused includes
• Use KStandardAction (member-)function-pointer-based overloads
• Use ECM-requirement-derived default KDE_COMPILERSETTINGS_LEVEL
• Drop any margins around document & tool views
• Use QList directly instead of Qt6-times alias QVector
• Switch from target_link_libraries' legacy LINK_PRIVATE to PRIVATE
• Use more target-centric cmake code
• CMake: remove unneeded explicit addition of current dirs to include dirs
• Fix build with older cmake: -D not expected with COMPILE_DEFINITIONS
• Update homepage to apps.kde.org
• Use commits.kde.org/kgraphviewer as source location for KGraphViewerPart
• Set version to 0.8.0
• Use CMake's project(VERSION)
• Drop support for Qt5/KF5
• Support Qt6/KF6 builds
• Rely on CMake's autorcc (enabled by KDECMakeSettings) to add Qt resources
• Use ECMDeprecationSettings
• Use KF6-proof KConfigGroup::group() overload
• Port away from deprecated KPluginFactory::create() overload
• Port away from deprecated KPluginLoader::factory()
• Port away from deprecated KFilterDev
• Port away from deprecated QPrinter::pageRect()
• Port away from deprecated QDesktopWidget
• Port away from deprecated QString::split overload
• Port away from deprecated QPixmap::grabWidget
• Port away from deprecated QTreeView::sortByColumn overload
• Port away from ModelTest copy to QAbstractItemModelTester
• Adapt iterator type to match actual type returned from QHash method
• Add explicit QRegExp includes
• Port away from deprecated QAlgorithmsPrivate::qReverse
• Port away from deprecated qSort
• Bump min required CMake/Qt/ECM/KF to 3.16/5.15.2/5.100/5.100
• appstream: use https for screenshot links
• appstream: use desktop-application type, add developer & launchable tags
• Appdata: Add developer name
• [CI/CD] Add flatpak job
• [CI] Don't depend on kgraphviewer on Windows
• Port to new CI template syntax
• snapcraft: initial import snapcraft files.
• Deploy ui.rc files as Qt resource
• Move Flatpak CI to GitLab
• Add explicit moc includes to sources for moc-covered headers
• Use non-deprecated KDEInstallDirs variables
• Install translations
• Port away from deprecated KMessageBox::sorry
• Remove arcconfig
• Remove unused include
• Use imported target for KGraphViewerPart
• debug
• Add Gitlab CI
• Remove unused XmlPatterns
• Add some missing linkages
• Use KDE_INSTALL_MIMEDIR instead of custom XDG_MIME_INSTALL_DIR
• appdata.xml: Minor fixes for submission to Flathub
• Fix minor issues found by EBN
• fix xml
• update screenshot
• Set StartupWMClass in desktop file
• ui.rc files: use <gui> instead of deprecated <kpartgui>
• Do not duplicate work done by KAboutData::setupCommandLine()
• Use nullptr
• Use override
• Fix window icon for non-desktopfile WM to own icon "massif-visualizer"
• Properly support BUILD_TESTING
• Remove explicit enable_testing(), duplicated from KDECMakeSettings
• Bump min cmake version to 3.0
• Remove explicit use of ECM_KDE_MODULE_DIR, is part of ECM_MODULE_PATH
• Fix minor EBN issues

Here's our bi-monthly update from KDE's personal information management applications team. This report covers progress made in the months of March and April 2024.

Since the last report, 36 people contributed more than 1300 code changes. Most of the changes will be available in the coming KDE Gear 24.05 release.

Akonadi

When Akonadi stores the timestamp of when a database entry has been last modified, the conversion from user's local time zone to UTC and back now works correctly regardless of the database engine used BKO#483060.

KOrganizer

KOrganizer has received a number of bug fixes:

• Fixed parsing of events with all-day recurrence rules (BKO#483707)
• KOrganizer now correctly tracks active (selected) tasks in the ToDo View (BKO#485185)
• Creating a new event from the date navigator in top left corner uses the correct date now (BKO#483823)
• Custom filters for event views in KOrganizer work again (BKO#484040)
• Improved handling of calendar colors
• The iCal Resource now correclty handles iCal calendars generated by Google Calendar, which previously caused an endless loop and high CPU usage by the Akonadi iCal Resource (BKO#384309)
• The ToDo view in the KOrganizer side-bar now works even when the Todo View isn't open
• The "Custom Pages" settings page, which didn't worked for years, have been removed
• Fixed a crash on exit after the Settings dialog was opened (BKO#483336)

g10 Code has kindly sponsored Dan's work on those bug fixes and improvements.

Kontact

• Fixed name of UI element being too long (Hide/Show Sidebar) (BKO#484599)

KMail

• Fixed a regression in the message composer that caused attachments to not get automatically encrypted when encrypting a message (T7059)
• Fixed not translated shortcut (BKO#484281)
• Fixed Monochromatic icons in system tray not always used (BKO#484420)
• Fixed some not extracted i18n string (BKO#484186)
• Allow to change print layout when we export as pdf (BKO#480733)
• Fixed KMail unexpectedly trying to connect to safebrowsing.googleapis.com (BKO#483283)
• Fixed KMail's config dialog taking a long time to show up (BKO#484328)

Identity Management

A new feature will arrive in 24.08: Plasma-Activities support (only Linux). So these class were adapted for supporting it. A check was added in KMail/Akregator/Knotes/KAddressbook, all work is in progress at the moment.

Kleopatra

The certificate details (user IDs, subkeys, certifications, etc.) are now shown in a single window. Additionally, information about the smart cards a certificate is stored on is now shown.

Further improvements are:

• The creation of OpenPGP certificates was simplified by replacing the complicated advanced settings with a simple selection of the algorithm and the validity period.
• If the search for certificates on a server takes longer, a progress dialog shows that the search is still ongoing. If no certificates are found, a corresponding message is shown instead of just showing an empty list of results. (T6493)
• Certificates stored on TCOS smart cards (e.g. the German Signature Card V2.0) are now imported automatically. Previously, the import had to be triggered manually. (T6846)

KNotes

• Fixed not translated shortcut (BKO#484281)
• Fixed some not extracted i18n string (BKO#484186)

Akregator

Martín González Gómez implemented a new article theme for Akregator which is not only more readable for long-form content but also adapts correctly to dark color themes.

Akregator has received a number of bug fixes:

• Fixing error when adding feed from https://www.qt.io/blog (BKO#484615)
• Fixing translated shortcut (BKO#484281)
• Fixing akregator icon, in systray does not follow dark breeze theme (BKO#483737)

Itinerary

Our travel assistance app Itinerary now shows more details about vehicle and train coach amenities, informs about daylight saving time changes at travel destinations and received many more fixes and improvements for extracting travel documents. See Itinerary's own bi-monthly status update for more details.

Merkuro

Merkuro now make uses of the new Date and Time picker from Kirigami Addons instead of bringing it's own. The date picker instance is also now shared in multiple places to reduce memory and CPU usage and speedup opening the even editor.

Various dialogs were also modernized.

Get Involved

Join us in the #kontact:kde.org Matrix channel or the kde-pim mailing list!

In our last post we had a look at how to set up QML Modules and how we can benefit from the QML Linter. Today we’re going to set up the QML Language Server to get an IDE-like experience in an editor of our choice. We’ll also help the the QML Compiler generate more efficient code.

Continue reading About QML Efficiency: Compilers, Language Server, and Type Annotations at basysKom GmbH.

Hello and sorry about the late post. I’ve been busy moving and other stuff that’s gotten in the way. I will also be idling the beginning of this month, so the next update may be shorter too.

Anyway, let’s get into the changes!

Kensa

I originally wanted to bring some of the “power-user” features from KSysGuard into the new System Monitor. I was rightfully turned down because they were hesitant of there being any use for most people and to prevent feature creep.

They suggested creating a seperate application instead. So Kensa, the detailed process viewer is born! It’s still mostly copy & pasted from old KSysGuard/libksysguard code, but updated for Qt6/KF6. And to make it clear, It’s very clearly modeled after the Window’s Process Explorer.

I have the general tab for viewing some basic information about the process. Said tab also includes an “Open With” so you can quickly open the executable in a hex viewer like Okteta.

The memory maps tab shows what the process has mapped, mostly notably which shared libraries it’s currently using.

The open files tab makes it’s return as well, extremely useful.

And one of my own design, an environment variables tab. In the future I want to add a “Strings” tab for quickly viewing the executable strings and the ones currently in memory.

Note that Kensa is very early in development and not user-friendly. You currently have it give it a PID manually and lacks a process list.

Tokodon

[Feature] The window title now corresponds to the current page. This makes it easier to identify from a task bar, too. We know the title is duplicated inside the application as well (on desktop), but that’s Kirigami’s design decision. [24.05]

[Feature] If your server doesn’t provide a human-readable error message, the network error is displayed instead. This is useful to see if the DNS lookup failed or some other network-related reason the server is inaccessible. [24.05]

[Feature] Support for QtMultimedia has been added in situations where your system lacks or cannot use libmpv. This is preparatory work for a Windows version. [24.05]

[Feature] In the same vein as the patch above, QtWebView is now optional and I included even more authentication fixes. Previously I enforced an in-app web view to facilitate authentication (compared to the external web browser method or auth code in previous versions.) This was only a stop-gap solution until I had more time to flesh out our authentication system, but now I feel much happier about it’s current state. [24.05]

System Monitor

[Bugfix] Fix the column configuration dialog being shown too small on the Overview page. [6.0.4]

[Feature] Add the About KDE page to the hamburger menu. [6.1]

[Bugfix] Made sure cell tooltips shows up more reliably. [6.1]

[Feature] Added a menu item to copy the current column’s text. This makes System Monitor just as usable as the old KSysGuard for me now, because I tend to copy the command line a lot. (And PIDs.) [6.1]

Ruqola

[Bugfix] Use a better fitting icon for attaching files. The previous icon - when viewed at 16px - turned into something completely different. [2.1.2]

PlasmaTube

[Feature] Added support for viewing a channel’s playlists. [24.05]

[Feature] I also added a Craft blueprint for Android. Note that this is only preliminary and the Android version is nowhere near ready yet. I guess this could be used for a future Windows version too.

[Feature] I implemented more functionality in the PeerTube backend, so now it’s possible to log in and perform searching. Subscriptions work too, but I’m running into an issue where yt-dlp fails to pull certain videos. If you know anything about using yt-dlp with PeerTube, please let me know if there’s a workaround. [24.05]

[Feature] Added a new feature to import/export OPML subscriptions. This only works for YouTube channels at the moment, PeerTube support TBA. [24.05]

Gwenview

[Feature] I changed the old save bar to use the standard KMessageWidget widget. This isn’t just for looks, it fixes a lot of odd visual bugs and removes a ton of cruft in the process. [24.08]

NeoChat

[Bugfix] Fixed the share dialog not appearing properly, and improve the keyboard navigation inside of it. [24.05]

Frameworks

[Bugfix] Remove some redundant QML_ELEMENT declarations which in turn reduces runtime warnings. [6.1.0]

[Bugfix] Two KMessageWidget improvements, by fixing handling of color palette changes and making the icon label vertically centered. This is for that Gwenview patch. [6.1.0]

Android

I once again sat down and fixed a ton of build and runtime issues for our Android applications, and started fixing some of the Qt 6.7 fallout. NeoChat and Tokodon build and run again, and spent some time ironing out their issues.

That’s all this month!