Well, I confess that I could be called lazy and all, since there is not that much visible progress in Lancelot’s world. But I have a couple of excuses:
Exams. Unfortunately, I have obligations beside KDE, Plasma and Lancelot. If somebody would like to pay me to do KDE work, I would gladly accept. :)
Plasma breakage. As you probably know, Plasma went through API review and conversion to WoC. So, that had to be done for Lancelot as well. And it was quite painful since Lancelot is based on completely custom-made widgets (now in a separate liblancelot library).
So, enough complaining and excuses, Lancelot is now again in buildable state, and more importantly, in a screenshottable state:
(the wallpaper atm is from NetBeans projet’s website).
The news include:
PUCK: Improvements to PUCK (Plasma UI Compiler) which now has an automatic module generator for custom classes. It parses the class definition and generates Python modules for PUCK (most Lancelot modules for PUCK are generated using this).
libLancelot: The backgrounds for all widgets are based on SvgPanel.
Lancelot launcher applet: The main applet is rewritten, and it has a few glitches at the moment. The configuration is now complying with the new Plasma’s configuration framework.
Lancelot menu: Have I mentioned that it is screenshottable? Nothing more than that ATM.
I was a bit jealous when I saw the Raptor menu’s site, so I decided that Lancelot needed one too. While compiling the latest KDE (and Plasma) from SVN I had nothing better to do than web design. The result is available right here. It is not finished yet - documentation and screenshots are missing, but I intend to make it more comprehensive in the future - along with the new developments in the world of L. So to repeat, the address of the site is http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org
The split
The latest development before the Big Plasma Breakage (or as some call it ‘the transition to Widgets on Canvas’) was that the Lancelot is now divided into two main parts - the application and applets on one side, and the liblancelot library on the other. The library contains the base framework including advanced Plasma widgets and layouts. It is in a very experimental state at the moment, and it is not advised for anyone to use it outside of Lancelot. The API compatibility is being broken every week at the moment, but at some point it will stabilise (sometime around KDE 4.2 or 4.3).
WoC
Plasma is becoming stable enough (API-wise) and now it is Lancelot’s turn to reach the Big Breakage. Or to be more precise, it currently is in it’s Big Brekage state, but needs to get out of it. Since there are quite a few things that need to be changed, I have decided to do a bit more, so a couple of old widgets are being reimplemented from scratch to be more flexible and reusable (most notable example is that the old list widget is being split into ScrollBar, ScrollPane and List).
That’s all for now, I’ll ping you all again when the library becomes compilable in all its glory.
Ovde imate članak o KDE 4.0 koji je izašao sa mesec dana zakašnjenja, i sa nekoliko što gramatičkih. što semantičkih grešaka napravljenih od strane lektora. (Original nema te greške, i to mogu da dokažem :) )
Plasma now supports different looks for panels depending on the screen edge where the panel is located. You can find more details about how to make this kind of themes at KDE’s Techbase. Basically if you want to create a custom look for a left panel, just create all background elements for it and add prefix ‘west-’ to the name of every element. (east for right, north for top and south for bottom panel).
If you don’t want to name all the elements yourself, you could always use the Slim Glow theme as a base template since it uses this new feature of Plasma.
This is a post from the Dot, I’m just copying the announcement here as well. So, if you would like to comment, just do it there please.
The KDE Plasma team is inviting everyone to participate in a contest to create Plasma themes from which a select few will be chosen to be included as a part of the upcoming KDE 4.1 release. This is a great opportunity to contribute to a very visible component of the KDE project, the Plasma desktop.
A great feature of Plasma is the ability to theme components of the desktop using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs). This means there is no need for you to know C++ or any other programming language to create a great looking theme.
You only need to know how to use one of many graphics tools (e.g. Krita, Inkscape, The GIMP, Karbon, etc.) and that is all. Depending on your prowess with such tools, you can create great looking plasma themes in as little as an hour.
Submit your work in the Plasma Themes section of KDE-Look.org website. Put a notice ‘(for theme contest)’ in the title of the theme.
Submissions will be accepted as a tar.gz file of the theme folder.
Submission deadline is 9th April, 2008 18:00 UTC. Themes submitted after the deadline will not be considered for this release.
Winners will be announced by 18th April, 2008.
All artwork must be original or otherwise meet the requirements for distribution as part of a GPL licensed project. Preferred license is LGPL.
Guidelines:
Consistency. All theme parts should fit nicely with each other.
Completeness. Although Plasma automatically loads required images from the default theme when they are not present in the active theme, it is suggested that you include SVGs for all theme elements.
Uniqueness. The unique always stand out in the crowd; so should your theme.
Have fun! The Plasma Team.
This is a post from the Dot, I’m just copying the announcement here as well. So, if you would like to comment, just do it there please.