Although this is not much related to KDE, or at all in fact, I decided to post it on my KDE development blog simply because there are so many KDE (and other) developers using Vim as their main (and only) IDE.

As I said earlier, I am a Vim fan, and I can not see that it will change in the foreseeable future. But, I have to say that, although I don’t find it a complete replacement of Vim’s Project plugin, that Quick Browser of Qt Creator is a very nifty feature.

So, I decided to start writing a Vim script which will emulate the Quick Browser behaviour. And so it started. The first version was a proof of concept one and it was designed so that the quick browser showed its results in a side panel (just as the Project plugin does).

And it worked quite fast.

The problem was that the Project, Code Navigator and my Quick Browser couldn’t work together very well - each one wanted it’s own window/buffer. So, I decided to start writing a simple Python (yes, Vim now supports Python scripting) framework that allows multiple plugins (called runners - took the name from Plasma/KRunner and I’m not ashamed) which are based on that framework to work together in harmony.

The project waits approval at SourceForge under the name Vide (obviously short for Vim - IDE). Currently only Quick Browser runner exists, but I’ll add more later.

Project management

And, that’s not all. There will be project meta-data which will allow you to define different build tools (cmake and qmake come to mind), …, and everything else I come up with… Since I’m bored and have to take my dog for a walk, this is all for now. So stay tuned.

I just wanted to thank every developer person who ever helped KDE.

Why just now? Well, first I saw the new list view in KMail which is rather awesome, and makes KMail even better than the former best* mail application - KMail without the new list view.

Beside that, I saw one of the tiny changes in Plasma related to the taskbar/icon tooltips. You’ll know what I’m talking about by moving your mouse from one icon to another.

Every now and then, KDE gets some, at first glance, totally insignificant feature (like this tooltip effect), but to be honest these little things really make a big difference. And such things really make me say “Wow, how neat!”.

So, everybody, rock on!

• Personal opinion, not a flamebait :)

You’ve heard it right, I’ve still got it! I still got the KDE mug we received (amongst other things) last year at aKademy! It is amazing, you can pour boiling tea in it and hold it with your whole hand without being burnt. Really amazing technology. And it is pretty, and has a nice logo on it.

Ok, I hear you saying “You dragged us here to listen just about a mug!?”. Well, I didn’t, but nevertheless, it is a really super-awesome mug, and it is an insult that you said “just a mug”!

Lately, I haven’t had much time that I could spend on Lancelot due to some other projects and the fact that I was to see Brian May (PhD) and Roger Taylor live here in Belgrade. But, than again, that’s a completely different story.

Keyboard support

The only thing from the (unwritten) Lancelot 2.0 roadmap that will be finished on time for 4.2 is the new ActionListView. You may recall mentioning the ActionListView2 in relation to the scrollbars that replaced the dreaded scroll buttons. Apart from the new scrolling mechanism, something else was weaved into the structure of the new lists. Ability to use them with the keyboard. So, that part is mostly finished in the current SVN version. The only thing left is to scroll the list to always show the selected item which will be trivial to do.

After that, the only thing left is to implement some fancy focus switching in the menu itself - for example, when you are in the search bar, and press the down arrow, to switch the focus to the first list etc. I hope I’ll be able to finish this in the week to come, so that after that I could focus only on bug fixing and stability (not that I’ve introduced a larger instability factor than the old ActionListVew was, but some bugs are to be expected).

Well, that is all for now… see you soon.

Addition: Junior Jobs

• Since I have received a few requests to sort the application list by name or description, and I haven’t got the time to do it now (it is a low priority task from my POV), if there is anyone willing to do that, you are more than welcome. Developing data models for L is as easy as it can be.
• The same goes for the thunderbird/evolution/whatever, pidgin/whatever support. If you know how to get online contacts or unread mails from the specified programs, feel free to use your knowledge and make a bridge between your favourite e-mail or IM program and Lancelot.

Well, since everybody is doing it, I too wanted to share my wisdom about the technology preview version of Qt Creator.

I will not write about the Qt Creator vs KDevelop relationship since KDevelop was never my scene. Tried the KDE3 edition once (a long time ago), and it just didn’t work for me (not only because of all the crashes). After that, I turned to Eclipse for C++ development because of its plugins, mainly the Subversion browser. I even set it to work with CMake properly, and to run KDE4 applications in their own environment. But, after awhile, I got tired of the slowness and of compilation errors related to ‘:w’ everywhere in the code, so I decided to return to Vim and to make an IDE out of it, but that is another story.

Qt Creator

At first I just downloaded it, started, and closed it almost immediately. Why? It looks too fancy for a real developer’s tool. Shiny run, debug and build buttons, etc. and a large Nokia logo. Why do I need that, I really don’t know.

Then, I decided to give it a second chance and start a small, but real project. The interface, although too fancy for me (remember, I use Vim) isn’t all that bad at all. It is pleasant and fast (unlike most IDEs today). I will not repeat Aaron’s stances on the subject - I mostly agree with him - I’ll just point a few other things that I did or did not like.

Pros

Well, I have nothing to add what was not already said - UI is clean, it is fast, it has a quite a few nifty features…

Cons

If this sounds too harsh or rude, I apologize, it wasn’t my intention, just trying to say what I find peculiar about the IDE.

I like keeping my code organized. I like having subdirectories, and subdirectories of those subdirectories etc. How to do that in Qt Creator? Well, to be honest, there is no way (at least not yet). You can organize your files the way you want, but Qt Creator will show all of them in a list. So, what is the point of organizing them? And what is the point of the Project browser if you get a list of a (potentially) few hundred files?

Then, you want to add a class to your project. You right-click the project in the project browser, and get an option to add a new file. OK, lets go for that. Here you get to create a ‘C++ Header file’ and ‘C++ Source file’ (amongst other non-relevant options for this task). OK, so we need to create them separately… but I know I saw somewhere an option to create a C++ Class… huh… let’s try this: File > New… Oh we get the SAME dialogue as the one we had earlier, only now we get to create a C++ Class as well. Strange.

Epilogue

I don’t want to sound like I hate the software, because I don’t - it is really cool, but I wanted to take it a bit more seriously than just ‘uh, a new toy, I must try it’. It has a potential to become a really good development environment, but has a really long way to go before it does.

And for the end, **Trolls*, good job so far, now just finish it ;)**.

• Hmmm, since it is no more Trolltech but Qt Software, should we start calling them Qties (Cuties) instead of Trolls? :)

This is only a rant with a highly provocative title, which reflects onto the contents of the post, but not in the way you have expected when you first read it.

So stop yelling your comrades to start to “sharpen the forks”. :D

So, what is this all about?

Well, for a long time now, I keep my system mostly clean of Gnome/GTK programs. Only a few remain (and probably will for both foreseeable and unforeseeable future), and those are GVim, Gimp (big kudos for the last version goes to the developers), Inkscape and Synaptic. Apart from those, whenever I need a program for something, I first search for KDE or Qt based applications, and only if those are non-existent, I consider installing something else.

So, what the hell is this title all about?

It’s about the fact that I have realized that now I’m avoiding KDE/Qt 3 programs as well. For example, I have lived without Digikam and K3B until the KDE 4 ports started to become usable. I still use Akregator from the “three” series, but that is due to the fact that new Akregator crashes a lot for me and I am too busy to investigate why.

So, that’s it.

If you are asking why I’m not writing something useful, that is mostly because I have had no time lately to do anything useful to write about. You can see that Lancelot commits were silent for the past 10 days, but I plan to change that very soon… See you later!