Overview

If you’ve been following my previous blog posts, you may recall that I’ve been working on enhancing the user interface of the Bundle Creator in Krita. The new Bundle Creator is to be designed similar to an installation wizard. By compartmentalizing the functionality into four separate sections, users can effortlessly navigate through the various aspects of bundle creation process.

My Progess so far…

I spent the last two weeks working on the Resource Chooser section. The Resource Chooser page allows users to users to handpick the resource items they wish to include in their new bundle. The most notable enhancement is the transition from a traditional list view to a more intuitive grid view for the list of available resources, similar to the Resource Manager layout.

In the previous version, users were required to individually select each resource item and use the > key to add them to the list of selected resources. However, now users can simply click on resource items directly to add them to the selected list. This seamless integration of the grid view and the ability to click-to-select greatly streamlines the workflow, especially benefiting tablet users of Krita.

One can also filter resources by tag or name before choosing resource items to be added to the selected list. This allows users to swiftly select resource items that serve a similar purpose when creating a new bundle. Gone are the days of scrolling through the entire list of available items; now, users can easily narrow down their options through efficient filtering.

And finally, to remove a single resource item, users can now simply select it by clicking on it. Similarly, for removing multiple items, users can hold down the Ctrl key and select multiple items imultaneously.Once the desired resource items are selected, users can easily remove them by clicking on the Remove Resources button .

Merge Request

You can view my merge request here.

Plans ahead

In the upcoming weeks, I would be working on the Choose Tags section. This requires some UI related feedback, and if you’re interested to help out, please feel free to drop a comment on this post I created on Krita Artists Forum!

And just to add a splash of colour to my blogpost, this is just a very quick artwork which I made using Ramon’s impressionism brush bundle. It’s super easy to use, do check it out! :D

MauiKit: A Toolkit for Multi Adaptable User Interfaces.

Today, we bring you a new report on the Maui Project’s progress.

Community

To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram: https://t.me/mauiproject.

We are present on Twitter and Mastodon:

• https://twitter.com/maui_project
• https://floss.social/@mauiproject

Thanks to the KDE contributors who have helped translate the Maui Apps!

Downloads

You can get the stable release packages [APKs, AppImage, TARs] directly from the KDE downloads server at https://download.kde.org/stable/maui/

And if you are feeling a bit curious about the Maui DE, you can download a new Manjaro-based image for **testing** the project’s current state.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nulogicos/files/maui-shell/ISO/manjaro-maui-shell-23.0.0-minimal-230606-linux515.iso/download

Note: Please be aware that this is an ISO image from a third party.

What’s new?

​​​

A few custom CSD button styles added. I’ll probably move them to a new package maui-csd-styles.
If you have a favorite window control button style- from back in the days of emerald and metacity – leave a comment with a link and I’ll add it. #mauikit@maui_project pic.twitter.com/713rE9B1iI

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 2, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

MauiKit Frameworks

At the core of the Maui Project lies its foundational framework, MauiKit Controls, which provides a comprehensive set of template controls for creating user interfaces. In this latest release, we have made significant improvements to MauiKit Controls, focusing on enhancing its configurability and overall consistent user experience.

One of the notable advancements is the increased configurability of MauiKit Controls, allowing developers to adapt the interface to user preferences more effectively. For example, new color styles have been introduced specifically tailored for E-Ink and AMOLED displays, ensuring optimal readability and energy efficiency on these screen types. This level of customization empowers developers to create interfaces that cater to the unique needs of users and their device preferences.

Furthermore, we have worked to establish a more consistent look and feel across all graphical elements within MauiKit Controls. This coherence ensures a seamless user experience, where controls harmoniously blend together, providing a polished and professional interface. Users will appreciate the enhanced visual consistency and intuitiveness of the controls, resulting in a more satisfying and engaging interaction.

Controls & Style – [3.0.0]

• Make the ToolActions have a uniform height for all the children.
• Style fixes to the ComboBox and SpinBox.
• In the Handy object check the clipboard for an image.
• Allow opening ContextualMenu and the cursor position.
• New control TextFieldPopup: a text field that expands to a popover for listing elements; a use case is for presenting inline searches and filtering.
• Fixes to the minimum ApplicationWindow size constraints on mobile.
• Tweaks to the TabView tabs, supporting now color and icon. Fixes the interactive property for touch-swiping gestures.
• Fix padding of elements such as custom CSD buttons, FloatingButton, SelectionBar, and others.
• Refactor the ToolActions control, no longer based on indexes, but rather relies on the Action children for setting the states.
• Fixed the crashing issue on Wayland when performing a DND action.
• The ListBrowserDelegate and GridBrowserDelegate now expose the autoExclusive property for such usage.
• Start using the new MauiMan Accessibility module properties for the scrollBarPolicy and playSounds preferences.
• Style the CheckBoxItem control for better contrast and consistency with the rest of the elements.
• Fix binding loops on some controls, such as ToolBar.
• Added a constrained width for the SideBarView sidebar to never exceed the width of the available screen width.

True Black and Inverted for e ink displays? @maui_project pic.twitter.com/1EWDJ4aEoh

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 13, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

FileBrowser, TextEditor, ImageTools, and Accounts – [3.0.0]

MauiKit FileBrowsing, has also received refinements in this release. The dialogs within MauiKit FileBrowsing have been redesigned to be more compact and visually pleasing, providing a cleaner and more user-friendly interface for managing files. Drag and drop operations have been fine-tuned to ensure smoother file manipulation, simplifying the organization and transfer of files.

MauiKit FileBrowser now has support for pasting raw images and text buffers into a new file. This is Index File Manager in action:#mauikit@maui_project pic.twitter.com/nn4wwjrQVz

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 18, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

Additionally, the API of MauiKit FileBrowsing has been cleaned up, resulting in a more consistent and developer-friendly experience. These improvements streamline the integration of MauiKit FileBrowsing into applications, allowing developers to leverage its power more efficiently.

The frameworks received the necessary fixes for supporting translations via KI18n and the KDE’s infrastructure.

• Check if the clipboard has any content that can be pasted into the FileBrowser.
• Allow pasting images and text streams into a new file in the FileBrowser.
• Added a readOnly property to the FileBrowser to avoid performing modifying actions, such as deleting, creating, or moving.
• Allow selecting large amounts of files – still not good [TODO]
• Do not count “.” and “..” entries in the directory count info.

Documents & Calendar – [1.1.0]

Updated to the latest MauiKit Controls changes. MauiKit Calendar has been updated to the latest changes in the Akonadi Frameworks.

Terminal – [1.1.0]

MauiKit Terminal serves as a terminal emulator control, powering the MauiKit Station app. In this new release, MauiKit Terminal has gained several exciting features to improve its functionality and usability. Users can now easily search through their command history, making it more convenient to reference past commands and outputs. Additionally, notifications for finished processes ensure users stay informed about completed tasks, enhancing multitasking capabilities.

To prevent accidental closures, MauiKit Terminal now includes alarms that warn users before closing any running processes. This helps avoid unintended disruptions and gives users the opportunity to save their work or take necessary actions. Furthermore, the adaptive color scheme of MauiKit Terminal has been refined for better readability and visual comfort, catering to various devices and screen types. The improved touchscreen support makes it even more intuitive for users to interact with the terminal using touch-based gestures.

• Do not trigger a signal for the process name if it has not changed.
• Refine Adaptive color scheme references.

MauiMan

Configuring Maui

For those who prefer smaller sizes for common elements: #mauikit@maui_project pic.twitter.com/FTdnzM7QWc

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 15, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

Maui Apps

The Maui Apps cover a wide range of essential functionalities, including a file browser, music player, text editor, image viewer, notes taker, video player, web browser, and calendar. In this latest release, our focus has been on expanding and refining the app stack, ensuring consistency, and bringing newer apps up to par with the established ones.

Among the recent additions, we have introduced an archive manager, providing efficient handling of compressed files. A GIT version control manager has also been included, streamlining collaborative software development. The new colors utility app helps users manage and explore color palettes effectively, while the camera app offers a convenient solution for capturing and managing photos.

It’s worth noting that some of these Maui Apps are also available on Android, making them accessible across multiple platforms. Furthermore, these apps are designed to work flawlessly on Linux phones, tablets, and desktop computers, ensuring a consistent and seamless user experience regardless of the device being used.

Index & Nota

• Index PathBar delegates now mask the content item to the arrow shape for more precise clicks.
• Index now allows pasting raw image and text buffers into a new file.
• The main context menu now pops up on the cursor position if triggered with a right-click on the desktop.
• Check if there are items in the clipboard that can be pasted.

Fiery & Vvave

• Fiery now can download files and notify about them.
• Fiery has a more compact look with merged tabs and toolbars.
• Fiery has a more adaptive interface on mobile mode.
• Vvave now has preference properties for toggling album titles.

Fiery web browser with a more compact & responsive layout + detaching tabs. now can also download files etc…#mauikit pic.twitter.com/MUZLvnwzK4

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) May 13, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

Buho & Pix

Bonsai & Clip

• Bonsai refactored with a new backend for performing GIT actions.

Arca & Station

• Arca can now create new compressed archives.
• Correctly prevent closing active processes and correctly accept to stop them.
• Station now has a new shortcut bar for signals.
• Station now checks the current program being executed and sets the best-fitted shortcuts bar, for example for Nano the nano bar.

Station with fixes for text rendering with Zsh themes. added more configuration options in settings. and support for alerts on finished processes and prevent closing running processes too… also configurable.#mauikit @maui_project pic.twitter.com/7ZoF8SlTUQ

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 4, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

Agenda & Strike

• Updated to the latest MauiKit changes,
• Updated to the latest Akonadi library changes.

Booth & Shelf – Communicator & Paleta

All are updated to the latest MauiKit changes.

Maui Shell & Maui Settings

Cask

• Fix bugs on dragging around CSD surfaces.
• Now uses the new MauiMan InputDevices keymap properties.
• Now uses the new QPA Theme and set the right env var to make use of it.
• Other Qt applications now look better with the new Maui QPA Theme.
• Tweaked the padding of the Chrome title bars.

Maui Settings

• The Theme module view has been refactored and split into subpages for better readability.
• Added a new sub-page to support picking custom color schemes.
• New QPA Theme plugin.
• Added a new Fonts subpage in Theme.
• Added entry to pick a custom wallpaper source directory in the Background module view.
• Organize the sidebar modules by categories.
• Can now filter the sidebar categories with keywords.
• Display an error message when a module could not be loaded correctly.
• Added the new InputDevices modules view with initial support for keyboard keymap options.
• Tweaked the About module view.
• Added a filter field for the Icons subpage.

Maui Core & Maui Wallpapers

More settings preferences…@maui_project pic.twitter.com/iXoKkgLR7J

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 13, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

```
stable/maui/agenda/0.5.0/ c75197601b15d7816153027ea3b4d090816365d7c6c9f6ed2c8011a31a3b68aa agenda-0.5.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/agenda/0.5.0/ cddbf790d71712e1389caac49a794f2b1c2c96bd4df1166d383e36717949abea agenda-0.5.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/arca/0.5.0/ 131a0e55834ac9d764cca4451aa5d18ac6fafe9fd5cf60e4b23807d85b997889 arca-0.5.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/arca/0.5.0/ 9d7dcbf34598aecd192307b294445d2376de3c7a2a80ee31188d647c8389aceb arca-0.5.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/bonsai/1.1.0/ 5ba6178b4267f8d263d7cc97ee5dd5085bdfde92a2176874521321835fb2a995 bonsai-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/bonsai/1.1.0/ 4297606dddcc18f6c00f78b4ecf8b263f2800e07ee1a7f0c14da2c96c2603178 bonsai-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/booth/1.1.0/ ec594127fac21cee8e10921a47002297cb526f411d64bdb1375f8646bc886558 booth-1.1.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/booth/1.1.0/ 384cbfa64ee0abedb4c62d224959801eb7619a05661a9f04d4166f1a148c25cb booth-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/booth/1.1.0/ 1c825949e760747ce26a577c46befd61b78c15771b555f3f68ed31b3dfed870f booth-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/buho/3.0.0/ c4034244e57273fa0d7bbb86616500973fde7276cefc9379e37a18a7e2095453 buho-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/buho/3.0.0/ 07145d1581b49aaee450df96dccac7f735d2d2868c42e55fff195194795a4690 buho-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/buho/3.0.0/ 08dbfe1df8e20d792812930af5179a230c4e0bd4963164a060c08440e607da23 buho-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/clip/3.0.0/ ebb49d2ae2225d8c091d1441ebd797eaf21416d5fe13d4857f4a409c653d917c clip-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/clip/3.0.0/ 93e52de3473b15a8054f5a4f193a34ade3b59702ae9d716ff1758e9b0b24df28 clip-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/clip/3.0.0/ 16d93db2184428263e92ccda7d77950f587e2f92212d42c5c01c792d55fbee8a clip-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/communicator/3.0.0/ 8ffce2e2e8b2bc0ea3a9c0a90fd9c8b4376ef745996d2b4b9061ec4b45f32eb6 communicator-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/communicator/3.0.0/ 206e4129029024a91eee59d2819ed7e2a67fafa16d0494ac4674742573c40f07 communicator-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/communicator/3.0.0/ 017f83366c8ac9d8518417a91c6411e77b44f26f6f69c17f7194a5cdf5cfc61f communicator-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/fiery/1.1.0/ fd9215a225a75975bd71515c3dfe90606ceaf48a27e9d411132bffce9f897c9a fiery-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/fiery/1.1.0/ f7fc6c416a4c215b2dd65c080eb82908687dbbd4c9c655ff01c1f422c9bc93e6 fiery-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/index/3.0.0/ 5beccbb39f0ef00ca7bb3dc0cc0e23b738e408a4b3d6d790d460343c8345506b index-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/index/3.0.0/ 1ca0ed4b4af6bfe6bbdd8165872756ff9774c682185d004642c36f7f2c6f2ef1 index-fm-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/index/3.0.0/ 324995147d2c18c8dd5e7e263e98fc088347e5581f7dab6d14bc1d50e02bac26 index-fm-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit/3.0.0/ de7381e957d61f6e81bca1349f12f4a992ded3010083c4aa4b35a9f6387325d9 mauikit-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit/3.0.0/ d864414f58a060141238640a9d813a2f4ae584b8ab7f474cac0df8add19b0d5f mauikit-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-accounts/3.0.0/ fb39a0ae0ac89e991ef952299a13a0bdd1fef6f8abdce516b7da61b869fec739 mauikit-accounts-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-accounts/3.0.0/ c80d030b7d41012d9431d3eb736f8407e53789e4aa3eb084e4f3d5a6852f6472 mauikit-accounts-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-calendar/1.1.0/ fdd57eee74a67859756182acd306a89f350f269ce5c2fe03d75128c37bb36294 mauikit-calendar-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-calendar/1.1.0/ 160d68cd9bbad197e6a07a16bfc4f568d52567772e17cb2374cc2a605b5cfb8b mauikit-calendar-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-documents/1.1.0/ 3af374204aa86225c3289cbf37a76f281707d4305fae071a4c3ee79a8193251b mauikit-documents-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-documents/1.1.0/ 1a17541156f502591127551b0d498fb1d17305d3b43750c508ce2cb2e0aad921 mauikit-documents-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-filebrowsing/3.0.0/ d3df8154a156d14f83367d609eafd5cf0f57cb06ef57e8348bd7c046388f0d0f mauikit-filebrowsing-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-filebrowsing/3.0.0/ 7d43f85f78ff461c8c28f19cfc912a8d16259039d43173a3ce806ec24d3fc420 mauikit-filebrowsing-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-imagetools/3.0.0/ 2d3b7ad6a611c03a29db0d20515294bb5cc0dbc6104ac1181f3e7674a6694852 mauikit-imagetools-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-imagetools/3.0.0/ 875eb5ba66227495ea1d40226bcda4b3d3d27e63ebc817216519bac8e7a07879 mauikit-imagetools-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-terminal/1.1.0/ ca18baf4ca158d856179659f86cb0497ead1e8f7af55b307b64c789f4635712a mauikit-terminal-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-terminal/1.1.0/ 66fb8e0d8cd6385f51f86c786418e167f18eaa0989ee0f78e6241ff134c1a436 mauikit-terminal-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-texteditor/3.0.0/ ee6902ce23fa7f25ba1503a5330f8824e9399ed59fee1e6adacf8574b37e8bba mauikit-texteditor-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-texteditor/3.0.0/ 67fa61e504ae2e7d5dd1f19fa643d8537516e154013a003f2efd6ef6d85146ef mauikit-texteditor-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauiman/1.1.0/ 6523705d9d48dec4bd4cf005d2b18371e2a4a0d774415205dff11378eee6468f mauiman-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauiman/1.1.0/ c84083254f5fcceba2529aa111d47f39bcb87e958d6de79057c24fb3c8ab801c mauiman-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/nota/3.0.0/ 3f6533194fcf732677251b19f898d791e1c4072c108898960c0dfd289dc26d30 nota-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/nota/3.0.0/ 31b8ee1b703d9329e30c99a9ad9886074468ef16b9926a2f29d674363b46614a nota-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/nota/3.0.0/ 9cff3b22653b4457c209e9bfe603d10527b5f5177034bc127721eb87b420e989 nota-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/pix/3.0.0/ 41efab544465f584c0cabcd77ecea6e058f0007f7d79e279070f63fff7faca95 pix-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/pix/3.0.0/ d186edc1d993922398510b4595d5efeb6d1b532b58d5e04a8c43871bfb6002c1 pix-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/pix/3.0.0/ 545d26cd625a2ec19d17cbd1031db9d2e530cd47f1dd2d13df4a752a86aaf43a pix-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/shelf/3.0.0/ c97f2379be4f83c41dbb789f534bea7f77b552cb2a42008bd98b273dbdc8a2ad shelf-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/shelf/3.0.0/ cd3770580732801f2589d5d6de6cf9d34bba6705403bad505bde778f8d3084a4 shelf-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/shelf/3.0.0/ a792580de49a9f081b8501b9d2016966a37a943328273d4addbd8854f11d83aa shelf-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/station/3.0.0/ 2641b59ff1f3c4e19e7edf4612cff16d66f3ba5b2562930345ae33882a6e7112 station-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/station/3.0.0/ 0ee62ea885a167d54d220537c505fe4244822d35f054b21a885e40e2052d3ff5 station-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/strike/1.1.0/ cabd7046fd982bca2297d4f2328198bd656e2ea67a877072784e89b978e15fad strike-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/strike/1.1.0/ b77bcd61b0a6324826f57131a084ded901ebb560a3d5c07dd98b7f424df2fa7d strike-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/vvave/3.0.0/ fc292587bd576be65dfe7f576c895f34659da569585ba1d0d5896ce8e7828c69 vvave-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/vvave/3.0.0/ c8c53df23cf9761cfa2cfb3f681db49b6e136a2f13d5464c7f534c3c585d5bf4 vvave-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/vvave/3.0.0/ d6194db2b947f716ec5728186801de2461b313736828a310a1034b20b32bdf7c vvave-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

The post Maui Release Briefing # 2 appeared first on MauiKit — #UIFramework.

Finally a sprint again! The 2019 the Plasma Sprint in Valencia was my first in person KDE event and I was hooked instantly. However something mysterious happened in the next years that and in person meet ups stopped happening. While Akademy 2022 happened in person again, a sprint has different atmosphere and I was awesome to see people that couldn’t make Akademy or for whom it was their first sprint. Other attendees have blogged about the sprint as well, check them out too. Either on the planet or over on discuss Carl created a collection of a bunch of them.

So what did I do? Aside from the usual talking, discussion, planing which the others already blogged about. (And of course the live bug investigations on fellow developers’ machines who always seem to attract the weirdest issues.) I am afraid I spent the rest of the time on boring backend stuff.

For Plasma 6 we want to make use of the layer-shell wayland protocol for positioning and stacking Plasma’s own panels, backgrounds and some other windows such as krunner. This protocol was developed by the awesome wlroots people and is currently proposed for standardization. In the past we used our own plasma-shell protocol and unfortunately not only Plasma is using it at the moment but it also spread to applications with more advanced use cases than just having a normal window. As mixing windows from both systems together will be harder to layout and in general a desire to move on from the plasma-shell protocol for a more streamlined experienced I ported yakuake to use layer shell via our own Layer Shell Qt library.

Still Wayland related but probably even less interesting, I started porting libtaskmanager away from KWayland. KWayland was/is a framework consisting of two libraries (client and server side) wrapping wayland code for more straightforward consumption of Qt programs. As you can imagine this is quite some amount of boring code to maintain and with other good solutions available we would like to stop doing so. The server part of the framework was already moved to KWin in the past and we embraced qtwaylandscanner there for generating code wrapping wayland. For the client side we are now moving in the same direction. KWayland included everything but most of it was not used because Qt handles all the normal interactions with the compositor and almost all the remaining protocol interfaces were used only once because there is only a single place in our stack that needs to communicate the additional information with KWin (for example Klipper or the taskmanager). So it makes sense to move the code to the places where it is used instead of having to maintain a framework with the usual stability guarantees.

But I did not only work towards eliminating a framework, I also created an entire new one. Sorry! Enter KColorScheme. To be fair it’s not entirely new but KColorScheme and friends moved to their own library. KColorScheme was a pain point in our dependency stack since it was very central but its location in the KConfigWidgets library meant that you had to depend on a bunch of unwanted stuff just to read some colors. So we decided at the sprint to split it out to a new library and I implemented that. Afterwards I adjusted some consumers which do not need to longer depend on KConfigWidgets together with Nicolas.

As you can see it was quite the productive sprint which was possible because of the awesome people at Tuxedo Computers who hosted us and the KDE e.V that enables people from all over the world to come together and build awesome things. Consider donating so that we can continue doing so. The last thing left to say, I will be at Akademy which happens soon. See you there!

As you probably have seen from other people’s blog posts there was the 2023 Plasma Sprint last week. It was generously hosted by TUXEDO Computers in their offices in Augsburg, Germany. Many thanks to TUXEDO for that!

Other people have already well summarized what happend there, so let’s have a look at what I have been doing:

Together with Kai Uwe, Volker, and Ismael I looked at notifications. This includes internal simplifications in KNotifications, API design questions, a proposed V2 for the notification portal API, and a new UI for per-event configuration in the notification settings module.

Together with Marco I looked into some API design topics around the Applet class in plasma-framework, and worked on a proposed new API for applet actions.

Given that Wayland was a huge topic at the sprint I continued the work of mine on enabling some accessibility options on Wayland. Sticky keys is not only what happens when you spill Spezi over your laptop, it is also an accessibility feature that allows people that cannot press multiple keys simultaneously to type key combinations like Control+C/Control+V. Basic support for this on Wayland is coming with Plasma 6. Not all of the options that are present on X11 work yet though. If you are a user of sticky keys please leave your feedback on https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444335 for which of these options should be prioritized.

Together with Natalie, KDE e.V.’s Hardware Integration Engineer, I discussed our touchpad configuration module and how to make it more robust and maintainable. We also discussed various topics around debugging and profiling KDE software.

Together with Xaver I looked into how Dolphin/KIO handles multi-GPU setups (so that apps preferring discrete GPUs will use them when launched via KIO). As it turns out there’s a few things to be improved there so we discussed approaches to do that.

With David I discussed some of my open changes to our global shortcuts infrastructure and continued working on improving that.

We also got a visit from two people from the city of Treuchtlingen, Germany. They have been using KDE software in their communal IT for over 20 years. We discussed their vision of using open source and open standards in government IT and some of their pain points with using KDE software for that.

Overall it was a very nice and productive week and it was great to meet so many fellow KDE hackers, some of them for the first time! Gatherings like this are only possible because of generous donations to KDE e.V. Please consider donating to make more such sprints possible.

About Me - I am Groot.

I’m Srirupa Datta, about to finish my undergraduate Electrical Engineering degree at Jadavpur University, India, in June. This year, I got selected for Google Summer of Code and will be working on improving the Bundle Creator in Krita.

My Introduction to Krita…

It’s been more than a year since my last blogpost where I posted monthly updates on my progress on adding the Perspective Ellipse assistant tool in Krita during SoK’22. Being a painter who’s interested in software development, I’ve been interested in Krita ever since I started using it.

What it’s all about

The new Bundle Creator

The new Bundle Creator would look like an installation wizard with four pages which can be navigated using the Next and Back buttons, as well as buttons on the left side panel.

I think the primary objective behind designing the new Bundle Creator was to organize its workflow, that is, segregate sections devoted to a particular function or job. This is what led to the idea of using a wizard, instead of simple dialogs. Hence it would have four wizard pages:

• Choose Resources
• Choose Tags
• Enter Bundle Details
• Choose Save Location

Some of the cool features you can expect in the new Bundle Creator are a gridview like that of Resource Manager’s to view all the resources, filter resources by name or tag before selecting, and an option to change back to the default listview from gridview if one wishes to stick to the previous layout.

Adding custom tags to selected resources is a feature that we wish to integrate, but it would require a redesign of the Choose Tags wizard page that has been shown below. Just to clarify, these are all mockups!

Yet another important feature would be reloading last bundle data when opened/on startup - this is particularly useful when making a bundle for other people.

Apart from these, the new Bundle Creator would be resizable(Yaay!), and a separate Menu entry called Bundle Creator would be created. We plan to move Manage Resource Libraries , Manage Resources and Bundle Creator from Menu > Settings to Menu > Resources.

And lastly, I would be working on adding the feature of editing bundles - this however needs to be discussed more and would be dealt with post my mid term evaluations.

And of course, if you want to suggest some ideas or improvements, feel free to drop a comment on this post I created on Krita Artists Forum!

I’ve been happily using Woodpecker CI to get CI for my repositories on Codeberg. Codeberg is a non-profit community-driven git repository hosting platform, so they can’t provide free CI to everyone.

Since I run lots of stuff on small arm boards (for example this website), I need my CI jobs to create arm executables. The easiest way to get that done is to just compile on arm devices, so I was happy to see that Hetzner is now offering arm nodes in their cloud offering.

To make that as cheap as possible, the CI should ideally create a VM before running its job, and remove it again afterwards. Unfortunately Woodpecker does not seem to support that out of the box at this point.

My solution to that was to build a docker proxy, that creates VMs using docker-machine, and then proxies the incoming requests to the remote VM. That works really well now, so maybe you will find it useful.

Setting that up is reasonably simple:

• Install docker-machine. I recommend using the fork by GitLab
• Install the backend for your cloud provider. For Hetzner I use this one
• Grab a binary release of docker-proxy (if you need arm executables), or compile it yourself.
• Create a systemd unit to start the service on boot in /etc/systemd/system/docker-proxy.service. This particular one just runs it on the woodpecker-agent user that you may already have if you use Woodpecker CI.

[Unit]
Description=Docker CI proxy
After=network.target

[Service]
User=woodpecker-agent
Group=nogroup
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/docker-proxy

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

• Fill in /etc/docker-proxy/config.toml This example works for Hetzner, but everything that has a docker-machine provider should work. You just need to supply the arguments for the correct backend.

[docker_machine]
driver="hetzner"
args=[
    "--hetzner-api-token=<token>",
    "--hetzner-server-type=cax11",
    "--hetzner-image-id=103907373",
]

[general]
timeout=300
port=8000

• Finally, make woodpecker-agent use the new docker proxy, by setting DOCKER_HOST=http://localhost:8000 in its environment.

I hope this may be useful for you as well :)

IT feels like a billion years before the last plasma sprint, which was in 2019 in Valencia, before the pandemic, but finally this year we are back on track, and was great to see again many old friends as well as seeing many new faces for which it was the first sprint.

We were gracefully hosted by Tuxedo Computers in Augsburgh, makers of very nice laptops that come with Linux and KDE Plasma, as well as being KDE patrons.

First of all, everybody got up to speed with a full git build of a Plasma 6 session, so that everybody could participate in development and discussions from the same level.

There were many discussions about Plasma 6, about what we want to do in Plasma and in Kirigami, how we want to change the look and defaults for the new major release. Most of the user-facing changes have been wonderfully described by Nate.

On my part, I worked on mainly 2 things, that were fairly not “glamorous” but quite important never the less (and mildly painful to do) : a refactor of the plasmoid loading code and splitting all the Svg themes code to a new framework with far less dependencies, ideally usable by any application.

Plasma API

I spent most of my hacking time at the sprint on a refactor of the plasmoid loading code, which won’t be really “seen” by the user, but will make the infrastructure much more robust and the API cleaner.

The person which must pay attention to it is the plasmoid author, which will need to adapt the plasmoid code in a few places.

Most notable is that, just like when you are writing a QML application you have to use the ApplicationWindow root QML Item, for a plasmoid you now have to use a PlasmoidItem root object, so something like

Item {
    Plasmoid.compactRepresentation: Label {text: Plasmoid.title}
    Plasmoid.fullRepresentation: Item {...}
}

becomes:

PlasmoidItem {
    compactRepresentation: Label {text: Plasmoid.title}
    fullRepresentation: Item {...}
}

A full porting guide is in progress.

KSvg

Using the Plasma Svg code to support stylesheet recoloring, on disk image cache to speed up loading, and the 9-patches FrameSvg is something the several applications would be interested to, and some actually are already doing, but since plasma-framework has a lot of dependencies, for some applications that is a blocker. All the svg code has now been broken out into a new framework called KSvg, which is still work in progress, but in the end will support all existing plasma themes with no change, and if an application wishes to use it, the svg sets will be loaded from the app own data folder (or anywhere else the application configures it to) instead of the share/plasma/desktoptheme folder, where plasmashell looks for them (so they can also use a complete different theme structure and don’t have to provide the same elements)

It’s finally there: Kaidan with end-to-end encryption via OMEMO 2, Automatic Trust Management and support of XMPP Providers! Most of the work has been funded by NLnet via NGI Zero PET and NGI Assure with public money provided by the European Commission. We would also like to thank Radically Open Security (especially Christian Reitter) for a quick security evaluation during the NGI Zero project.

Even if Kaidan is making good progress, please keep in mind that it is not yet a stable app. Do not expect it to work well on all supported systems. Moreover, we do currently not consider Kaidan’s security as good as the security of the dominating chat apps.

There is a new overview of features Kaidan supports. Have a look at that or at the changelog for more details.

Encryption

All messages sent by Kaidan can be encrypted now. If a contact supports the same encryption, Kaidan enables it by default. Therefore, you do not have to enable it by yourself. And you will also never need to worry about enabling it for new contacts. But it is possible to disable it for each contact at any time.

Additionally, all metadata that is encryptable, such as typing notifications, is encrypted too. The new Automatic Trust Management (ATM) makes trust management easier than before. The details are explained in a previous post.

We worked hard on covering as many corner cases as possible. Encrypted sessions are initialized in the background to reduce the loading time. Kaidan even tries to repair sessions broken by other chat apps. But if you discover any strange behavior, please let us know!

We decided to focus on future technologies. Thus, Kaidan does not support OMEMO versions older than 0.8.1. Unfortunately, many other clients do not support the latest version yet. They only encrypt the body (text content) of a message, which is not compatible with newer OMEMO versions and ATM. But we hope that other client developers will follow our lead soon.

XMPP Providers

Kaidan introduced an easy registration in version 0.5. It used an own list of XMPP providers since then. The new project XMPP Providers arose from that approach. That project is intended to be used by various applications and services.

Kaidan is now one of them. It uses XMPP Providers for its registration process instead of maintaining an own list of providers. Try it out and see how easy it can be to get an XMPP account with Kaidan!

Changelog

This release adds the following features:

• End-to-end encryption with OMEMO 2 for messages, files and metadata including an easy trust management
• XMPP Providers support for an easy onboarding
• Message reactions for sending emojis upon a message
• Read markers showing which messages a contact has read
• Message drafts to send entered messages later after switching chats or restarting Kaidan
• Message search for messages that are not yet loaded
• New look of the chat background and message bubbles including grouped messages from the same author
• Chat pinning for reordering chats
• Public group chat search (without group chat support yet)
• New contact and account details including the ability to change the own profile picture
• Restored window position on start

Download

• Source code (.tar.xz) (sig signed with 4663231A91A1E27B)
• Linux (Flatpak on Flathub)

Or install Kaidan from your distribution:

This new entry will cover ways to configure global preferences for Maui Apps and Maui Shell.

MauiMan

MauiMan stands for Maui Manager, and exists for setting, saving, and syncing the configuration preferences for the Maui Apps ecosystem. These configurations are global, and some of them can be overridden by the apps themselves, but more about that later. To store the configurations MauiMan uses the MauiMan.conf config file, located at your local config path: for example ~/.config/Maui/MauiMan.conf.

(!) The settings modifications are only written/saved when using the MauiMan API directly.

MauiMan consists of two parts, a (1) background server that syncs and broadcasts the preference properties changes to all the running Maui Apps, and a (2) public API, that allows app developers to easily hook their apps to the system preferences. The MauiMan server program is named MauiManServer and uses the DBus IPC.

The public API and the server are divided into modules: for different setting categories, such as Theme, Background, Accessibility, FormFactor, etc…

Using MauiMan to configure Maui Apps.

To configure existing preferences, there are different ways to do it, from a graphical interface to editing a text file or even hooking to the public API directly (for developers), in the following sections we’ll cover all the possible ways.

The ideal way to set the configurations, from a user perspective, is to use the Maui Settings application, which exposes all the MauiMan preferences in a graphical manner; although, some of the settings presented are “curated” to use predefined sane values, for example, not allowing to set the border-radius of elements to an unfitting value rendering the interface unusable. This means that with this approach you dont get full control over the values of the properties in all the cases, but you are less prompt to mess up.

Maui Settings also exposes other settings for other system stuff, such as Networks, Sound, Notifications, etc. If any of the needed servers to sync configurations are offline, Maui Settings warns you about it and allows you to launch the server daemon with a single click.

(!) Keep in mind that Maui Settings is still under heavy development and most modules are still not implemented.

Another way to do interact with MauiMan is by using DBus directly. For this one can use a graphical application and navigate to org.mauiman.Manager and then dive into the existing modules for modifying the properties.

(!) Using this approach will not save the changes made: it will keep the changes in memory as long as the MauiManServer daemon is running, but once the process is restarted those changes will be lost since changes to the MauiMan properties are only saved when using the MauiMan public API.

Another apporach is to manually edit the MauiMan.conf file. It has a couple downsides:

• The changes won’t be made live.
• Changes won’t be loaded until MauiManServer process has been restarted since MauiManServer saves in memory the properties and only loads preferences from the config file on startup.

Using this config file is a convenient way to set default values for distributions shipping Maui apps, so they can be styled for the distribution. This config file is located at:

~/.config/Maui/MauiMan.conf

Here’s a snapshot of the config file contents:

[Accessibility]
SingleClick=false

[Background]
DimWallpaper=false
FitWallpaper=false
ShowWallpaper=true
SolidColor=#ffff00
SourceDir=file:///usr/share/wallpapers/Cask
Wallpaper=file:///usr/share/wallpapers/Cask/Cloudy Noon - 5K (16:10).jpg

[FormFactor]
PreferredMode=0

[InputDevices]
KeyboardLayout=us

[Screen]
Orientation=1
ScaleFactor=1

[Theme]
AccentColor=#000
BorderRadius=12
CustomColorScheme=Amethyst
DefaultFont="Noto Sans,10,-1,0,50,0,0,0,0,0,Regular"
EnableCSD=true
EnableEffects=true
IconSize=16
IconTheme=Colloid
MarginSize=4
MonospacedFont="xos4 Terminus,12,-1,7,50,0,0,0,0,0,Regular"
PaddingSize=4
SpacingSize=4
StyleType=1
WindowControlsTheme=CadiumGloss

Accessing these MauiMan properties is also possible from an application side too: for developers there is the MauiMan public library which exposes all the properties trough a public API. So if you need to know about the current workspace background image source, you could hook to MauiMan::BackgroundManager::wallpaper()  and even connect to wallpaperChanged signal to know in real time when the wallpaper has been changed.

#include <MauiMan/backgroundmanager.h>

void func()
{
auto wallpaper = MauiMan::BackgroundManager().wallpaperSource();
}

Most of the properties are already quickly accessible via MauiKit Style object,  (for apps developed using MauiKit) which besides syncing to MauiMan changes can also override these properties with in-app specific values and if needed clear those using undefined to return using the MauiMan values.

For example, for setting the style type as dark for an app, despite the global preference being different:

​​​​Maui.ApplicationWindow
{
    Maui.Style.styleType: Maui.Style.Dark
}

​and to reset the value back to the global system preference:

​​​​Maui.ApplicationWindow
{
    Maui.Style.styleType: undefined
}​ ​​​

CaskServer

To configure Maui Shell preferences and expose those to any other processes, there is CaskServer, which as MauiMan, has two components: a CaskServer daemon for syncing/broadcasting the properties changes and the public library.

The public library allows apps to request Cask to draw custom shadows, title bar colors, and more privacy settings, via the Chrome and Screenshot modules. More modules include Shell, Power, Profiles, and Notifications.

The Shell module allows tweaking the Cask elements such as dock, panels, launcher, popups, etc preferences.

Some of these properties can be modified from Maui Settings, while others, such as properties from the Chrome module, are specific for a given app, so an individual app can be hooked to the Chrome module via the CaskServer library to perform changes to the available properties.

(!) CaskServer as Maui Settings and Maui Shell is still under heavy development and isn’t stable enough yet for commercial use, keep this in mind if you decide to give it a try.

The CaskServer configuration file is located at :

~/.config/Maui/CaskServer.conf

More detailed information about configuring Cask and Maui Shell will soon be shared, as development progresses.

​​​​​​

To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram: https://t.me/mauiproject.

We are present on Twitter and Mastodon:

• https://twitter.com/maui_project.
• https://mastodon.technology/@mauiproject.

New release schedule

The post Configuring Maui appeared first on MauiKit — #UIFramework.