It is a well known fact that devs hate writing the user documentation
(we are not even fond of writing devel documentation), so it was the
same case for me and Lancelot’s manual.
But from time to time our conscience tells us that we should do
something about it. In this case, the role of my conscience was played
by annma :)
The comparison is most probably biased (although I tried hard for it
not to be), so any help in that department is appreciated. (any help in
any department is more than appreciated)
Now, the article that is yet left to be written is the introduction
to the Shelf applet (ex Lancelot Part) and I’ll be able to rest on my
laurels with the shiny new Lancelot that will be published with the KDE
SC 4.5. :)
Preamble: I have no intention to start a dispute
related to the new applet browser in Plasma. Some people like it, some
don’t, some prefer the old one, some want something completely
different…
As you don’t already know :), Marco did some great work which I’m not
gonna talk about - he said he’ll make a screencast of it eventually. So
I’ll just mention a side-effect of that made possible by a 1-minute
patch by yours truly.
KRunner (and Lancelot, naturally) as widget
explorers
From KDE SC 4.5, you’ll be able to fire up KRunner or Lancelot,
search for some plasma widget and drag it to the desktop.
KRunner
Well, that’s all :)
Edit: You can also create a shortcut like Meta+P to
open krunner with only this /plasma/ runner enabled via Global Shortcuts
(thanks vilder for info)
I’m not going to make a detailed post, just a screen-shot based
overview of the new features you can expect in KDE 4.5.
Cascading popups
There was a lot of talk in the beginning about why Kickoff and
Lancelot are not like the classic menu - and don’t have popups. Although
I still don’t consider cascading popups to be good, liblancelot supports
them. After a large amount of polishing, the feature is ready to be
exposed in the menu itself. It is considered experimental, but it works
quite well.
Lancelot cascading
How to activate: Configure Lancelot Menu > Applications > Open
popups for subcategories
This feature is not yet enabled for the Shelf applet (ex Lancelot
Parts) but it still may find its way into it for 4.5.
Smaller section buttons.
Lancelot sections
vs.
Lancelot sections with small buttons
How to activate: Right-click any of the section buttons and choose
“Make buttons narrower”
Search history
Lancelot now remembers what you have typed in the search box, and
auto-completes your query.
How to activate: Start typing - the closest match will already be in
the search box, grayed out a bit. To use the whole completion, press End
key. For completing smaller parts, press right arrow key.
Search engines (runners) configuration
Now, you can choose which runners to enable and which ones to
disable. You can disable the slow or crashy ones, …
First of all, I need to apologize for not doing this earlier - I was
rather busy lately.
The other problem is that “remember the milk” plasmoid is
ruining/spoiling me. Until I started using it, I somehow found the time
to do stuff in order not to forget what I need to do. This way, when I
have a reminder, I can postpone most of the items in it indefinitely.
;)
So, without a further ado, I present the first public release of the
fantastic, greatest and uber-awesome brand-new (and did I say fantastic
and awesome?) plasma theme named ASCII (it is awesome… and fantastic…
and unique… and gorgeous… and uniquely fantastic… and awesome…):
